The first set of principles and recommendations for population and housing censuses was issued in 1958 at the request of the Statistical Commission of the United Nations in response to a need for developing international standards and as a cornerstone of the first World Population and Housing Census Programme. The revised census recommendations provides more elaboration on alternative methodologies to the traditional census for producing census statistics based on national experiences of the 2010 census round and also introduces major changes to concepts and terminology related to economic characteristics.