If the Urban Institute’s calculations are right, it’s nothing short of remarkable that the U.S. Census Bureau’s headcount last year was that close.
The Washington think tank said this week that it believes the 2020 census missed 1.6 million people, or only about half of 1% of the U.S. population.
That’s much better than the Census Bureau itself had predicted even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In 2019, the Census Bureau estimated an undercount of 0.84%.
The 2020 census, which will determine political representation and how some federal funding is allocated, ran into serious headwinds, real and metaphorical. The arrival of the coronavirus — which produced social distancing and widespread hunkering down — made it much more difficult for canvassers for the Census Bureau to go door to door, which is often what it takes to reach the chronically undercounted. When their field work was suspended during the early waves of the virus, the Census Bureau moved its cutoff date from July 31 to Oct. 31, although that was later trimmed by two weeks at the wishes of the Trump administration. Hurricanes and other severe weather events didn’t help either. And the former president also tried to reduce the participation of non-citizen immigrants, which by law get counted in the census, by unsuccessfully trying to add a citizenship question.
Some groups did worse than the average, according to the Urban Institute. Black and Hispanic undercounts, which historically are among the highest due to minorities’ distrust of government, were more than four times the national average.
Still, if the Census Bureau’s official accuracy calculation, due next year, is anywhere close to the Urban Institute’s estimate, then it should be considered a victory in getting the message out about the importance of the census and in educating people about the ease of responding online.
- The Greenwood Commonwealth
