I understand what you are saying (and appreciate your saying it), I’m just not comfortable accepting without documentation (“proof”) that the effect of the mailing would be significant enough to justify the expense.
You could reach close to 100% compliance by offering a substantial cash payment in exchange for a completed form. However, while 100% compliance is a laudable goal, I don’t think anyone is considering paying people to reach it.
Based on my experience I’ll guess that the people who seem to take pride in gumming up simple government programs like the Census, and perhaps insulting the government workers doing their duty tend to be the very same people as those who denounce government “waste” and the “hostility” or incompetence of government employees.
I was actually excited to get my census form. The last census was when I was 13, so this is like an “adult milestone” for me. I was disappointed that it was so short.
Crazy to think that by the next census I will probably have kids.
This makes me think about the different stages of life I’ve been in at the times of the censuses:
1970: I was a third grader.
1980: I was a high school senior
1990: I was in graduate school living with housemates
2000: I was a single man living alone
2010: I am a married man with a child
Pre-contact letters are common practice in marketing and health research, as are post-contact reminders. The only cites for efficacy that I could provide are behind pay walls or hard copy, but if you google a bit you’ll find that they are certainly prevalent.
Haven’t gotten ours yet.
But in reading what other have written, kind of sorry it is so lame.
Wish they would be more thorough and ask more questions - don’t mind telling them we are two Gay guys and be counted as such, although I guess they could surmise that by our ages and gender, but still.
Didn’t realize they had gotten rid of the long form for some households.
Hourly, but they are fired very easily if they are not doing enough work. I must have fired 3 out of the 15 I was given.
It is a highly temporary position, to say the least.
You talking 'bout me again? 
We just received the senseless. I am only going to write in the number of people living here. That’s it. If they don’t like it they’re welcome to come and arrest me.
They will surmise it when they see your genders and the fact that the relationship of the second person to the first is “unmarried partner” or “wife or husband”
Mailed mine back today, but I called it the sensuous, on accounta how I licked the flap.
Back when I was working on it last year we had several people on my crew fired for “cheating” (basically, too many short cuts instead of doing the work as told to do it), only one that I know of for being insufficiently productive.
Yes, you are expected to hump - you do have to earn that wage.
Only if you answer my knock with a shotgun. I tell ya, after reading some of these census threads I’m seriously considering kevlar attire and bringing my crossbow.
Hey, I’d much rather be interviewing daffy but affable senior citizens than bothering you. I’m hoping that they’ll accept “number of people” as being sufficient enough to not require follow up with the, um, unhappy about the census crowd.
I personally cannot understand the aggression some people feel towards a census. If the government really wanted to know about you - they have other means. Why would you only want to tell them how many people live at your home and nothing else?
America, where some people insist at gunpoint on being a number - not a name.
Yeah, way to show them. :rolleyes:
If they already know about me, why do they have to ask?
To know where you live more precisely. To know where to spend federal dollars and what not.