Let the Great Head Count Begin!
January 25th, 2010 | Posted in Population Basics
by Mark Mather, associate vice president, Domestic Programs
Today, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves is headed to Noorvik Alaska to kick off the 2010 Census enumeration of the U.S. population. By mid-March, the Census Bureau will have mailed out more than 120 million questionnaires to residential addresses around the country. Earlier this month, the Census Bureau also launched its $133 million advertising campaign to boost awareness of the census and why it’s important.
A report released last week by the Pew Research Center showed that 9 in 10 people know about the census and understand that it’s important, but getting everyone to send back their completed forms is another matter. Nearly one in five people are ambivalent about participating in the once-a-decade enumeration of the U.S. population. Among those who said they won’t participate, most reported they are either too busy, not interested, or don’t know much about the census. But more than one-fourth of the census doubters—those that keep Census Bureau staff up at night—said they either don’t trust the government, don’t think the census is important, or have concerns about invasion of privacy.
There is more at stake here than the accuracy of the data. For every 1-percentage-point increase in the initial mail-back response rate, taxpayers save up to $90 million in costs associated with in-person, follow-up interviews to collect the missing information. For more information about the 2010 Census and why it’s important, visit PRB’s website.
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February 7th, 2010 at 8:32 am
The census is crucial for one thing only… enumeration of the population for representation of citizens at the federal government level. For this purpose the data collected needs only to be rudimentary. Since 9/10 people are already aware of the census, an ad campaign is likely a waste of taxpayer money. The rest of the households will become aware of the census when the forms arrive at their homes. Compliance is reduced by the nature and number of questions asked so for the purposes for which the census is intended the questions should be minimized. Compliance up and cost down… what a concept. Intrusiveness and complexity reduces compliance. Nothing makes the paranoid more paranoid than increasing the number of questions or having a government agent show up at the door asking questions that the paranoid didn’t want to answer in the first place. Complexity and intrusiveness up… compliance down and cost up. Almost certainly that will be the route the government takes