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It's hard to comprehend how these things could possibly cost as much as they do. A billion pounds to send some letters? Huh

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£1bn total is about £15/person. Delivery has to be guaranteed because the letters are a legal requirement. If each delivery covers two people, but sending out and returning are both paid for by the government, and if it counts as a 100-250g large letter 2nd class, that’s already £2.52/person without the cost of printing, processing, or storage.

If everyone answered their one letter I'm sure the census would be a lot cheaper, but I think most of the real cost comes from employing thousands of people who go around the country knocking on the doors of those who haven't responded yet.

How do other countries do it?

I'm fairly sure we're having one next year over here in Eastern Europe and no way is our government spending that much on a census, we got some jet fighters for about that much...

Hmm, 906 million for 66 million people = 13.7 pounds/capita.

Romania does it for 1/3 of that, 84 million Euro for 20 million people = 4.2 Euro/capita.

There's a breakdown of how it's done and the spending, too:

https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/costuri-uriase-recensamant-b... (translate with whatever, Google and Bing are useless for me)

OK, so wages are a factor, but the UK's cost seems like it should be lower.

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