COUNTRY OF BIRTH

The net undercount rates for Country of birth are displayed for the ten highest ranked countries (in terms of population residing in Australia) according to the 2016 Census.

Of those countries listed, persons born in Australia had the highest net undercount rate (8.1%), followed by Vietnam (7.3%) and South Africa (7.2%). This is a change from 2011, where Australia-born persons had the seventh highest net undercount, behind China and India as the top two. In 2016, persons born in India had the lowest net undercount rate (5.0%) followed by those born in England (5.4%) and the Philippines (5.5%). China showed the largest change in net undercount of the ten highest ranked countries, with a difference of 8.7 percentage points (from 14.9% in 2011 to 6.2% in 2016).



It is important to note that people who have come to Australia from other countries and whose first language is not English may find completing a Census form more difficult than other Australians. For several Censuses, special strategies have been employed to promote an understanding of the Census among migrants and to provide assistance in a range of languages.

Similar to Indigenous status, Country of birth may also be left blank in the Census. Since Census does not impute a Country of birth for these people, their Country of birth is set to not stated in Census counts (which is also the case for imputed persons). However, they contribute to net undercount estimates based on the category in which they should have been counted, as reported in the PES. There were 1,622,118 people (6.9%) whose Country of birth was not stated in the 2016 Census, compared with 1,195,432 people (5.6%) in 2011.

For information on how Census not stated responses feed into estimates of net undercount, see Components of Net Undercount on the Summary tab.