• Survey Research
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.97-114
• /
• 2009

Even the importance and necessity of a basic national statistical survey, the population and housing census is facing with some practical difficulties such as higher survey cost, decrease of survey information and much longer survey period. As an alternative to the traditional census for tackling such difficulties, a rolling census has been introduced. The rolling census has some advantages such as improved timeliness with much more frequent data and evenly distributed survey cost over several years. On the contrary, the rolling census has also some disadvantages such as the lost of snapshot feature of the population and increasing risk of outside influence on field work. In this paper we reviewed the French rolling census and the American community survey as roiling surveys, and then investigated some factors like balanced sample selection, population update, synthetic estimation, and the operation of rolling survey, which are to be checked carefully in case of introducing a rolling census as an alternative to the current census.