Like sands in an hour glass....

There was talk of postponing our census usually done every five years, in order to direct funds into updating the department you could say.
 A lot of other places have a census every ten years some with sampled surveys, for instance, Argentina, Spain and France.
 The UK (64 million) does a full census every 10 years as does the USA (320 million) where the last questionnaire was short namely ten questions. 
 In comparison, our form is giant with 61 questions but our population is low (23 mill) and a full census of every household is attempted.
In France (63 million) annual surveys and rotating samples is an unusual method. Smaller towns are counted every 5 years and larger towns are sampled annually.
To each his own.