Citizenship question will reverse progress toward trust in the census
A sample Census form is seen during the kick off of the 2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour in Times Square January 4, 2010 in New York City. Credit: The 2010 census did not include a contentious citizenship question. However, the Commerce Department on Monday granted a Justice Department request to add the question on the 2020 census.
The census has been a cornerstone of our democracy since the first official count was taken in 1790.
The information from the census is central to our governance and economic growth. Its data underlie the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, are used to ensure civil rights statutes are not violated and are employed to distribute more than $600 billion in federal funds a year.
Also, both businesses and governments rely on its accurate figures to make decisions that impact the economy and local communities. Less known is that census numbers are used to design the samples for hundreds of federal surveys and studies that inform federal policies and research.
Therefore, conducting an accurate 2020 census is important because inaccuracies will have serious consequences for the next 10 years. Its purpose — to count everyone residing in the United States once and in the right place — is now jeopardized after the Commerce Department on Monday granted a Justice Department request to add a citizenship question on the 2020 census. This question has not been tested in a modern census environment, nor is there time to test the question before the 2020 census. However, adding the question could reduce responses to the census disproportionately among certain groups.
The groups that might be expected to be wary of responding to a census questionnaire that asks about citizenship are among those groups of U.S. residents who are traditionally hard to count. The census has seen a marked improvement in accuracy since 1990, when there was a significant undercount of black and Hispanic residents. Beginning with the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau began to employ a combined paid advertising and partnership program. The program bought national and local advertising and deployed a large number of partnership specialists around the country to get out the message through trusted voices that the census is important to each community and the answers provided would be confidential. No individual’s information would be shared with law enforcement, including the immigration and border patrol services, FBI, CIA or police.
The advertising campaign and partnership program helped achieve dramatic gains in the accuracy of the 2000 and 2010 censuses as compared with the 1990 census. The percentage of black or African-Americans who were missed in the census dropped from 4.6 percent in 1990 to 2.1 percent in 2010. The number of missing Hispanics dropped from 5.0 percent to 1.5 percent. This was particularly important to areas of the country with large concentrations of hard-to-count populations, including New York, Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida and the rural South.
A sample Census form is seen during the kick off of the 2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour in Times Square January 4, 2010 in New York City. Credit: Getty Images / Mario Tama
There is a significant risk that the inclusion of the citizenship question on the 2020 census will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Census Bureau to effectively communicate to individuals in many communities that the 2020 census will be confidential.
If that happens, we would see a return to the undercounts that were experienced in the 1990 census, reversing the progress that has been made toward greater accuracy while also undermining democratic institutions, the fair allocation of federal resources, and planning efforts by local communities and businesses.
John Thompson worked on the 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 censuses as a Census Bureau employee. He was the executive in charge of the 2000 census and was director of the Census Bureau from 2013 to 2017.
