The Shanghai Statistics Bureau is to conduct a study on 1 percent of the local population in an effort to grasp changes in the amount of the city's population, its structure, living conditions and future trends.

The study will be conducted on figures from the last national census five years ago.

The State Council ordered that every province and municipality in the country conduct the survey, a routine procedure in the interval between the nationwide census which is conducted every 10 years.

The local census study will start on November 1 and end in mid 2006.

According to bureau officials, the census will cover all 200-odd subdistricts, towns and villages in Shanghai's 18 districts and Chongming County. It will cover all the basic information of randomly selected correspondents and include age, gender, education, job, birth condition, social welfare and living conditions.

By the end of last year, there were 18 million permanent residents in Shanghai, 1 million more than that of 2003.

In addition, by 2003, there were about 5 million migrants locally, according to the bureau.

(Shanghai Daily February 22, 2005)