How to treat data from the sample of the 2000 Demographic Census to obtain estimates for native peoples in Brazil? A study based on the Lands of the Xavante Indians in the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil

Abstract

The demography of the Brazilian native peoples is still uncharted territory in its numerous and diversified aspects. There has been growing interest in the topic in recent years, with the publication of a number of studies on the demography of native peoples, on the basis of census data. One major methodological difficulty is the problem of expanding the census samples, since the lands of the native peoples were not originally defined as weighted areas. This article presents estimates for the variables on the questionnaire for the “sample,” considering one set of census sectors belonging to the lands of native peoples, using as a case study the lands of the Xavante Indians, consisting of six non-contiguous areas located in the eastern part of the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso. This methodological exercise is designed to compare and evaluate the estimates produced according to the weights generated at the time of disclosure of the Census 2000 results and the new weights calculated on the basis of the methodology presented here. From the methodological point of view, this procedure is innovative as it might be useful for estimating, on the basis of the data from the sample on the 2000 Census, characteristics of areas that are non-contiguous and different from those defined for expanding the sample as originally conceived and published by the Brazilian Census Office.