Preparations for the 2010 census are under way. So are some rows
Scratching the ten-year itch“IT’S not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting,” wrote Tom Stoppard, a British playwright. Months after voting in a new president, America is readying itself for another big effort: counting every American. The census, required every ten years by the constitution, will determine the distribution of congressional seats and $3 trillion in federal funds over the next ten years. The 2000 census is said to have been the largest peacetime mobilisation in American history. The 2010 census will be larger.
To count every man, woman and child in a country as large as America is no easy task. The next census is expected to cost $14.5 billion, up from around $8 billion in 2000 and $4 billion in 1990. The Census Bureau has already hired 140,000 people to walk around checking all addresses so that the census form, which asks ten questions about matters such as marital status, race and the number of people in a household, can be sent out next March. Over a million employees will be needed next year to go door-to-door and track down people who did not return their form.
State and local governments are readying their publicity machines. The recession means that states need as many federal dollars as they can get to pay for roads, social services and education; population is a big factor in divvying out the cash.
The political ramifications of the census are huge as well. Several states in the north-east and Midwest have lost population, and will probably lose seats in the House of Representatives (and electoral-college votes) to states in the South. Texas could gain as many as three seats.
Drawing attention to the census is especially important in cities and counties with lots of people who are hard to count. Illegal immigrants, the poor, the homeless and minorities all have high non-response rates, which means that the places where they live do not get all the money they are entitled to. More than 3m people are thought to have gone uncounted in the 2000 census. New York City alone is thought to have lost out on about $850m.
Illegal immigration poses a particular challenge. The Census Bureau asks everyone to take part in the census, regardless of immigration status. It is an uphill battle, however, to convince illegal immigrants that they are safe sending their name and personal information to the government.
The debate over how to count all Americans was reignited in April when Barack Obama nominated Robert Groves, a former Census Bureau official, as census director. In the 1980s Mr Groves supported the use of statistical sampling to estimate how many people the census misses. Republicans objected loudly: it is widely presumed that most hard-to-count people vote Democratic. Mr Groves has pledged not to use sampling in 2010. And plans are afoot to turn the bureau into an independent agency, in the probably vain hope that this would free it from politics.
Poor Mr Groves will have his hands full. The recession will make counting people next year even harder than usual. Foreclosures and job losses have caused people to move, and homelessness is up. But at least, thanks to the large number of jobs it is (temporarily) creating, the census may help lift the economy a bit.