The Washington Post has an article on the early success of the census. I would (though I recognize it is an assumption) give a lot of credit to the advertising campaign that began some weeks ago. One ad shows a fire company with faulty equipment attending to a burning house. Another shows a vastly overcrowded school. I find these ads somewhat disturbing because (to me) they encourage people to lie on their forms. Want more fire trucks or bigger schools? Make them (them, being the Feds) think that there are more people in town. Does this bother anyone else, or am I misinterpreting the ads?
Once in a while you can get shown the light
in the strangest of places
if you look at it right…
I have to admit I was surprised when I first found out that the census is being largely handled in a do-it-yourself, fill-out-a-form-and-send-it-to-us format.
I was under the impression prior to this year that employees would be going door-to-door and doing a physical head-count of people. Possibly taking the word of those at each residence as to people who weren’t there.
That still wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be far less rife with fudging opportunities.
In Detroit, for example, there are localized ads emphasizing the importance of filling out the census, because the city may have dropped just below 1 million people, and will lose considerable federal monies if that is proven true.
Whatcha wanna bet that they make it just barely over a mill? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
Actually, now that I think of it, the answer to your question is “no, the census is not accurate.” There’s good evidence that a lot of people were missed last time around, with the consequence that some areas didn’t get all the Federal funds they’re entitled to. Hence the rather dramatic, “here’s how it affects you” advertisements, to increase participation.
“The dawn of a new era is felt and not measured.” Walter Lord
I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that the Census Bureau is employing a team of statisticians that will try to predict the amount of fudging that occurs on census forms, in addition to estimating the amount of people that did not turn in a form.
On the fire truck one, it comes off to me like a threat. I f you lie or don’t fill in the census, we will take away your equipment and burn your houses down! :eek:
The government’s after me.
To he who has lost his hope:
Please claim it at the lost and found at the front desk.
Actually, if you don’t send in your Census form, an enumerator will come to your house and ask you the same questions. The goal is to count everyone and there’s a lot of time and money spent on sending out “foot soldiers” to get data from those who don’t send in the form. Of course, if you get the short form you can also fill it out online at http://www.census.gov (sorry, I don’t know how to set up the link).
I agree, and I think Congress would have been well advised to allow “statistical sampling” in order to try and make up for the inevitable shortfall among minority and economically disadvantaged groups.
earendel1, I wasn’t thinking of people not sending in the form, I was thinking of people that might want to do what the OP suggests, i.e. fill out the census form with more people than are really living at your house.
The reasoning being:
If I have three kids, put down that I have six. If everybody in my neighbourhood does that, we’ll get twice as much money for schools!
That may be true except that the Congress explicitly said “no sampling.” It’s not in the interest of the ruling party in Congress to count everyone. If the Democrats were in the majority, there would be sampling.
Both sides say they have noble reasons, but really they just wanted to preserve or gain political power.
Detroit fell below a million a long time ago. It was only by rearanging numbers in '90 they made it above a million and now they are too far below for that. Chicago did the same thing in '80 to keep ahead of LA and to be over 3 million.
The constitution requires that the population be counted not estimated. This is the main reason the numbers are not adjusted. If they were adjusted there be lawsuits.
The count is required only for dividing up the House of Representatives.
Congress can choose to spend your tax dollars any way they want. If they want to divide the money according to estimated population numbers, then they can. There is no constitutional requirement that they spend based on the census.
Did you read in the paper that New York City is trying to count as many homeless people as they can to increase their population. This is probably the only time the homeless are wanted in NYC.
Not quite the case the population census was adjusted in 80 and 90 to take in account for errors.
It was the fact some people wanted to do away with counting all together and just use a sampling.
As stated before both Chicago and Detroit used this method to increase their population counts. Most likely justified. But the Republican are in control and any undercount will not benefit them so they would like to leave it as is.
Aren’t white people now a minority in California? I think we are going to find out soon.
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Minority of what? If you divide population into “white” and “non-white” (and oh what a can of worms those terms open), yeah, maybe. But that’s rarely how it’s done. More common is a division along the lines of “White non-Hispanic,” “Black non-Hispanic,” “Hispanic,” “Asian,” and “Other” (and oh what a can of worms those terms open). In such a case, it’s entirely possible that no group would have more 50% of the population, so no one would be in the majority. But one group – most likely the first in the above list – would have more than any other (perhaps by a sizable margin), and thus be called a “plurality.”
Thus endeth the vocabularly lesson for today…
“The dawn of a new era is felt and not measured.” Walter Lord
We got a look at the census books (years ago) either in the form or real books or microfilm (I was a kid!) and the entries were hand written. People were supposed to go door-to-door! But now even these hand written door-to-door census are being called into question. The census takers weren’t chosen for ability or accuracy but for penmanship! Handwriting in some cases was so handsome that the suspicion was the census taker wrote the books at home - maybe didn’t go door-to-door at all and all kinds of other stuff.
The census is not accurate, never was, never will be. But that host of statisticians mentioned above make all the corrections possible for the people who lie, don’t submit their forms, and any other deviation possible. You can bet on it!
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
