It’s not the same thing. A census isn’t just used to figure out how much people there are and where they live. They ask a number of other questions that might be relevant for the implementation of various public policies, at the local or national level.
So, I’m wondering if you’re not mistaken when you state that there isn’t any census in your country. Are you sure it’s not done by sampling, as it is now in Germany/France? Because when it was a general census, that was a big deal, we would hear about it in the news, were informed about the procedures, etc…But since they switched to sampling, census is never mentioned anywhere, and since I’ve never been sampled, it could as well not exist any more for all I know.
The best solution to this problem seems not to ask any question about religion. Why do they do that, anyway? AFAIK, they do not fund churches (or mosques, whatever) in the UK, so why would they want to know?
And while I’m at it : why do they ask about race in the USA?
Sweden has used existing data sources to perform its census since 1995.
Partly to check for institutional racism and the like. Nobody who said they were a baker was African-American? Better see if the baker’s unions discourage black participation. No nonwhites in this giant apartment complex? Better see if there’s a violation of the Equal Housing Act.
More importantly, voting districts are arranged nowadays to ensure fair representation, so there tend to be a few black- or Hispanic-dominated districts rather than a bunch with black or Hispanic minorities.
As in the United States, we use our census for information on scads of government issues. (Actually, I can’t think why a state would bother to hold a census, if not to use it to deal with government issues.)
Among other things, redistricting for our electoral districts is based on our census, both in terms of apportionment of federal seats by province (Quebec is fixed at 75 seats and the other provinces determine their seats by proportion, with certain provinces having a minimum number and the territories having one each) and district boundaries, which are set by a non-partisan boundaries commission (and based on communities of interest, demographics, etc., beyond simple population).
The questions vary depending on the census, with certain questions asked only once every ten years rather than five. Also, one of every five households receives a special census with substantially more questions - stuff they don’t need to ask everyone but still want to know.