4.1 King Gustav Vasa made lists of taxpayers

Finland's present population register, the foundation of population statistics, is based on combining the data evolved from two different needs - domicile registration and church registers. The older of these is domicile registration, which dates from as far back as the early 16^th century.

The authorities' information needs for tax collection gave the impetus for domicile registration, and the first lists of the population were prepared in the early 16^th century by the order of King Gustav Vasa. The maintenance of lists was connected to the administrative reform implemented by Gustav Vasa, aiming to specify the amount of the taxes to be collected from the kingdom.

It was also ordered in 1540 that the peasants and the taxes imposed on them were to be catalogued in land registers. Land registers and other irregular collection of information for taxation are thus the only information sources on the population of the 16^th century.

Maintenance of lists on men fit for military service was started in the 17^th century. Every tenth man was selected to the army from these military recruitment lists. This means that the basics of the sampling technique were well known as early as the 17^th century!