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2011 Census of Population & Housing - Jamaica
xiv
Ethnicity and Religion
While these topics are described in very general terms by the United Nations
Recommendations and are proposed as “other useful topics” (United Nations 2008)
rather than “recommended topics”, they are proposed as core topics for Caribbean
censuses because of the racial and religious diversity of these populations. With
changing social and political climates, race for most societies has come to be defined in
social rather than biological terms. For Jamaica the responses from the census are
considered to reflect more of people’s perception of themselves rather than ascription to
a particular group on the basis of physical appearance. Testing of this question for
Jamaican censuses evoke very interesting responses as many persons appear confused
by the question “
To which race or ethnic group would you say you belong?”
Census Takers
are instructed to read the categories as written on the questionnaire and to accept the
respondent’s reply. The instructions even suggest that the Census Taker might remind
the respondent of the Jamaican motto “Out of Many One People.”
The response categories for 2011 were exactly the same as for 2001 and both sets of
responses are shown below.
Table (xii) Percentage Distribution of the Population by Ethnic Origin: 2001 and 2011
Ethnic Origin
2011
2001
Total
2,683,707
2,595,962
Black
92.11
91.61
East Indian
0.75
0.89
Mixed
6.06
6.21
Chinese
0.19
0.20
White
0.16
0.18
Other
0.07
0.08
Not Reported
0.65
0.82
The responses for the ‘Other’ categories which were written on the form but not coded
separately are being manually extracted for analysis and presentation in a future report.
One of the most requested items of census data is religion. Unfortunately it poses
considerable problems for data collection. There are numerous churches and
congregations in Jamaica and there is a limit for identification on the census
questionnaire. Additionally, care has to be taken in combining groups to avoid conflicts
of beliefs and practices. Table (xiii) shows the responses for the 23 categories listed for
this topic.