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UNDERCOUNT ADJUSTMENT FACTORS

While estimates of net undercount are important for an effective understanding of the completeness of Census counts, undercount adjustment factors provide an indication of how much the Census count for a given category would need to be adjusted in order to reflect the PES population estimate for that category.

The undercount adjustment factor is the ratio of the PES population estimate to the actual Census count. This factor can be applied to the Census count for any category to indicate how many people should have been counted in that category. For example, the Census count of 23,397,296 persons in Australia multiplied by the adjustment factor of 1.010 (or unrounded: 1.00967662) indicates that 23,623,703 persons should have been counted in the Census.

Population Estimates, Census Counts and Undercount Adjustment Factors, 2016
		PES population estimate	Census count (a)(b)		Net undercount		Undercount adjustment factor
	no.	SE	no.	no.	SE	no.	SE
New South Wales	7 539 414	30 837	7 480 220	59 194	30 837	1.008	0.004
Victoria	6 012 621	25 059	5 926 593	85 028	25 059	1.015	0.004
Queensland	4 763 760	22 882	4 703 210	60 550	22 882	1.013	0.005
South Australia	1 679 607	8 595	1 676 633	2 974	8 595	1.002	0.005
Western Australia	2 483 901	14 081	2 474 424	9 477	14 081	1.004	0.006
Tasmania	510 261	3 444	509 965	296	3 444	1.001	0.007
Northern Territory	240 874	3 720	228 854	12 020	3 720	1.053	0.016
Australian Capital Territory	393 265	5 347	397 397	-4 132	5 347	0.990	0.013
Australia	23 623 703	48 328	23 397 296	226 407	48 328	1.010	0.002
(a) Includes imputed persons in non-responding dwellings. (b) Refers to Census counts which correspond to the scope of the PES and may differ slightly from aggregate counts in other Census products.