Director: Census backed by alternate counts
The Census Bureau director said Wednesday it was "comforting" to find the 2010 Census results falling in line with alternative population measurements - indications of a good count.
Census Bureau director Robert Groves, in a Washington news conference, said the 2010 Census population count for the nation of 308.7 million falls in line with an analysis that estimated the country's population using birth and death records and estimates of immigrants.
"Comparing the 2010 official count to alternative estimates, the 2010 count is very close to the middle estimate analysis," Groves said. "This is a comforting fact," he added, noting that "something completely independent of the census" produced a similar result.
Groves added that another method, which used the 2000 Census as a base, then factored in birth, death and immigration data to estimate the 2010 population, was within 0.8 percent of the 2010 Census count.
"There has never been a perfect census," Groves said in response to a question at the news conference. "I'm willing to speculate we will never have a perfect census, not in a democracy anyway. So how do you evaluate a census? . . . We look at a lot of different ways that try to do the same thing . . . When, however, we see everything kind of pointing in the same direction, that gives us a comfort."
Groves said the bureau is in the early stages of a "post enumeration survey," a large sample that seeks to evaluate how good the 2010 Census is by sending out "highly skilled interviewers" nationwide to reinterview residents. The survey is not expected to be finished until 2012, but he said "preliminary findings" were encouraging. He said it indicates the Census' master list of addresses was a "good one," and that the percentage of units whose census information was verified as correct is higher in 2010 than in 2000. That's another "good sign," he said. He added that the percentage of duplicate housing units was lower in 2010 than it was in 2000. "So far," Groves said, "this is looking good."
