So, you’re taking the census; here’s why

The Telegraph
March 28, 2010

The census form should have already shown up in your mail, which seems a good excuse for a question-and-answer session about this decennial event.

Q: Remind me again: What is the census?

A: The founding fathers realized that in order to govern a country, you have to know something about the people in it, so they mandated in the Constitution that every person in the country should be counted once per decade.

The census (from the Latin word “censere,” meaning “to assess”) has happened every 10 years since then. Before 1980, it was done almost entirely through door-to-door questionnaires, but now it’s largely done by mail.

This year’s form has been whittled down to 10 questions: name, address, phone number, age, gender, race and ethnicity, living arrangements and home ownership of people living at that address.

Q: And this is important why?

This tally is used to do everything from determine voting districts ( Massachusetts is going to lose at least one seat in Congress because of population shifts that the census will reflect) to federal spending. Basically, the government can’t serve people if it doesn’t know they exist.

To put it in dollar terms, census data is used when parcelling out more than $400 billion a year in federal and state funds, going to schools, roads, hospitals and the like. If New Hampshire, or your town, participates less in the census than other places do, then the state or your town won’t get its fair share of use from tax dollars.

Not just money is involved: even the amount of H1N1 “swine flu” vaccine that New Hampshire received from the federal government was based on the census population.

And not just the government uses the data. Among other things, corporations often look through census data as a starting point when deciding where to build facilities.

Q. I really hate filling out forms and answering personal questions. Do I have to?

A. Yes, and you might face a penalty if you don’t (although penalties are extremely rare).

U.S. law (Section 221 of Title 13, Chapter 7, United States Code) says that if you refuse or “willfully neglect” to fill out the form or answer a Census worker, you can be fined $100. If you “willfully give any answer that is false,” you can be fined $500.

The law specifically adds, “No person shall be compelled to disclose information relative to his religious beliefs or to membership in a religious body.”

Despite the penalty, roughly one-quarter of most American residences don’t send the form back – a percentage that’s echoed in Hillsborough County. This is why Census Bureau “enumerators” will be blanketing the country on Thursday to hunt down places that didn’t return a form.

Q. Who sees my answers?

A: Only the Census Bureau. By law, it can’t be shared with the police, immigration officials, the IRS, city housing inspectors or with anybody at all outside the bureau.

Q: What happens to my answers?

The bureau removes personal information and combines answers into demographic and geographic groupings – not just states, counties and towns, but items it calls Census Tracts (Nashua has 15, some of which are further subdivided), block groups and even blocks.

The releases of data often is limited because of privacy concerns. For example, the bureau often doesn’t provide data on racial breakdowns in small New Hampshire towns because they have so few non-whites that people might be able to connect answers with individuals.

You can look at information gleaned from the last census on the bureau’s American FactFinder webster (factfinder....census.gov), where you can learn such fascinating tidbits as that Brookline had more males than females, 13 people in Hudson reported being “native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander,” one-fifth of people in eastern Nashua (03060 ZIP code) had college degrees and 12 percent of Lyndeborough’s residences were occupied by renters rather than owners.

Q: Didn’t the census used to ask about a lot more stuff?

Yes, it did, but the number of questions was reduced this year to increase participation. You aren’t the only one who hates filling out long forms.

The bureau does ask more detailed questions, about topics such income, education, how much you spent on electricity, whether you’re a veteran, even how far you travel to your job – but that’s in a detailed form called the American Community Survey that’s sent to a randomly chosen sample of households.

Q: My kids are at college, and will be there April 1 (official census count day), but are still my legal dependants and still have a ton of stuff in my house. Should I include them on my form?

A: No. They should fill out a census form at college because that’s where they’re living on April 1.

Q: My cousin Vinny will be visiting my house on April 1, but lives somewhere else. Should I include him on my form, or should he fill out the form mailed to his house?

A: The census is designed to count people where they’re living on April 1, not just visiting. So, don’t include Vinny on your form; he needs to fill out the form at his own house.

– DAVID BROOKS