Forward Thinking
We know where you live. Really. This year, many enumerators, or census takers, will carry handheld computers equipped with a Global Positioning System to help track down addresses. GPS use will make the searching go faster and increase productivity, but the big advantage, according to the Census Bureau, is that adding GPS coordinates for addresses to the bureau’s database will ensure that an accurate location is recorded for each resident. That will help officials redraw congressional districts if necessary.
Keeping it brief: There will be just ten questions on the 2010 census form—one of the shortest since the first enumeration, in 1790. (Question No. 1: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?) It will use 30 percent less ink than the 2000 census and be printed on 30 percent recycled paper. And there will be no long-form supplemental survey: These days, the bureau gets much of its most detailed information about us from the annual American Community Survey and the every-five-years Economic Census.
Oficina del Censo: The upcoming census will be the first to offer Spanish-language questionnaires—part of an effort to increase participation by Hispanics, many of whom fear filling out the government form if they are in the country illegally. (In fact, the census doesn’t ask about citizenship, only nationality. And cities benefit from having illegal, as well as legal, immigrants participate, since larger urban populations mean more federal aid.) Also encouraging a better count? Telemundo producers, who made a character in a popular Spanish-language soap opera a census worker to help ease fears of the count.
Bargain rate: U.S. officials may want to look to Switzerland. Its 2010 census will be the first that annually synthesizes information gleaned from local and regional population registers, records of buildings and dwellings, and other public information, supplemented by a sample survey of 200,000 people. The new approach, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, offers “an excellent cost/benefit ratio.” Its cost? About $10 million per year. (They take their census annually.) The U.S. price tag for 2010? Nearly $15 billion.
The Time Line
1787 / The U.S. Constitution mandates that a national census be conducted every ten years to determine seats in the House of Representatives and to guide tax policy.
1790 / The first census records the head of household’s name and counts occupants (slaves are tallied as three fifths of a person). Total cost: $44,000.
1810 / To get a sense of the national economy, Congress orders census takers to tally manufacturers too.
1830 / Census-taking marshals and their assistants are finally given officially printed census forms so they won’t have to use whatever blank paper they find handy.
1840 / Census grows to more than 70 questions, including the number of “insane and idiotic” in each household.
1850 / All free household residents are now recorded, in addition to the head.
1860 / The census, especially its industrial statistics, will prove useful in assessing the relative strengths of the North and South during the Civil War.
1880 / The government gives federal marshals a break and hires “enumerators.”
1890 / Hands-free! Electronic punch-card machines are introduced.
1930 / Census takers begin to mea¬-sure unemployment. Jobless respondents not hard to find.
1950s / Gigantic UNIVAC I computer helps tabulate results; still relies on punch cards to do so.
1980 / The ever more exact census becomes ever more politicized: States, local governments, and civil rights groups file lawsuits challenging the results.
1998 / Cities and states that lost funding after the ’90 census support a suit to use statistical sampling to adjust for under- and overcounts, with President Clinton’s endorsement. The Supreme Court rules against them 5 to 4 in 1999.
2010 / In March, more than 120 million census forms will be mailed out. If you don’t reply, expect to hear from one of the Census Bureau’s 1.4 million temporary hires.
