On Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:30:02 +0100, roy.stockdill@btinternet.com wrote: >Here's a thought that struck me only yesterday when I was doing some research >in the US censuses..... > >People often complain in this country that the census questions get more and >more intrusive every decade, though whether there will ever be another one >seems to be up in the air at the moment. > >However, I was doing some research in the US censuses in connection with the >latest subject for my Famous family trees blog at Findmypast (a UK celebrity >with an American connection) and looked at the censuses from 1840 to 1940 >online. > >Looking at the census for Brooklyn in 1870, I suddenly noticed that there were >two columns (8 and 9) headed "Value of Real Estate" and "Value of Personal >Estate". The person I was looking at said they had real estate worth 10,000 >dollars and personal estate of 3,000 dollars, which I imagine was quite a lot >in 1870. Whether the question about personal estate related to furniture, >household effects, etc, or actual cash was not clear. Checking further, I >discovered the same questions about real and personal estate values were asked >in 1860 also but in 1850 only the question about real estate value appeared. > >The questions about the value of real and personal estate appear to have >disappeared by the census of 1880 - perhaps too many people objected to being >asked such personal questions. I find it interesting that in America, the land >of liberty and dislike of government interference, such questions could ever >have appeared in a census at all. > >Someone may prove me wrong but I don't recall any UK census asking a question >about property values and certainly not how much money you had in the bank. I >can imagine the outcry if they did! > The property value question was probably a crude method of gauging the house size and money in the bank being a variation (how much have you got left rather than how much do you get paid) on questions on income, something which in the UK is dealt with by ONS surveys rather than the census. For Scotland :- 1861-1911 - number of rooms with one or more windows The US seems to be somewhat inconsistent with what personal information is available for people living or dead. While birth records are commonly closed for 100 years, other information which in the UK would be considered nobody else's business often seems to be available without restriction.