Are your country's statistics reliable?

[Zeno]

We cannot know for sure to what extent they lie to us and about what, but of course we can all assume from the variations that we see published by official sources and comparing it with what we can perceive in our daily life that something doesn't match.

Sometimes even the official sources themselves change the data over time, or make corrections or apply different criteria so that it is difficult to compare different periods, even for the same parameter.

This is seen in the different ways that there have been, for example, of measuring unemployment, it has been changing as time goes by.
Or how the CPI is measured to have an idea of ​​inflation. In theory, the CPI measures the price variations of a determined list of common products of regular consumption, but as consumption practices vary over time, the list of products varies, in the same way that the price of a certain product varies depending on what day. of the month or in which establishment or what quality that certain product has.

The best way to manipulate reality is not to lie about the data we offer, but to change the parameters and criteria used to prepare that data.

Well, in my country's case, it's not so much about what methods they're using, but if they actually bother to properly measure it. And if they measure it, if they're going to do what has to be done.

The examples I mentioned aren't random: for the census, my sister was a censor as well, and she knew a lot of her colleagues didn't do the job as it was intended. Many in my suburb alone weren't recorded either through the internet through the letter with the serial number they had to obtain, or through live interview. Then, for the consumption and income data, while the authorities know that many people hide their incomes, they do nothing to target these said people, but instead redirect any policy of taxation towards those who do not, and who already pay a lot of taxes. Or as you've mentioned it, about unemployment: many are counted who are "officially" unemployed, but are in practice fully employed, and who take their money basically without insurance (and thus, the state not being able to track them so as to tax their work).

As for the changes in the official data, that was consistent practice of the Greek governments for the debt and deficit trajectories.

Such changes serve their own benefit, rather than that of the population. In fact, it's done to their absolute detriment, as was evident later, in a very harsh way.

[Tooting Carmen]

Statistics provide a rough indication about things, but they are certainly not Gospel. And I am impressed they still have proper Census collectors in Greece - in the UK, for the last few decades it has been done either online or through people completing handwritten forms to send off.

[Zeno]

Statistics provide a rough indication about things, but they are certainly not Gospel. And I am impressed they still have proper Census collectors in Greece - in the UK, for the last few decades it has been done either online or through people completing handwritten forms to send off.

For things like the population of the country, which on its own affects pretty much everything in terms of politics, and the income of people, based on which taxation is going to be considered, there shouldn't be estimates, but concretely definite data.