old europe wrote:
...
It's just that unless we know what methodology has been used to arrive at the numbers published in the Britannica, it'll remain somewhat of an apples-to-oranges comparison.
My personal library currently contains Britannica Books of the year from 1969 to 2007.
Back in 2002, I made a telephone inquiry to Britannica about their sources for Democraphic (e.g., Population) and Vital Statistics (e.g., Birth Rate, Death Rate, Major Causes of Death -- accidents and violence) statistics. They said government and hospitals were the primary sources for their population, vital, economic, etc. statistics.
In each yearbook there is an Introduction to its "World Data", explaining the sources of its statistics for 214 countries including Iraq. None of these statistics are obtained from polls of any kind. I infer (there's that word again) that they get their statistics from multiple government and hospital sources which they then analyze to arrive at what they think is a consistent set each year as well as year to year.
Recently, they have added URLs to supplement their Books of the Year. The URL for Iraq is to Central Bank of Iraq:
http://www.cbiraq.org/cb1.htm