1. Mapping Hard to Count Communities with HTC 2020 for a Fair and Accurate Census
Steven Romalewski
Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)
(with slides from Dr. William O’Hare on undercount of young children)
February 2019

2. Every 10 years, here’s how the Census Bureau counts us:
Self-Response phase:
Census Bureau mails information about the decennial questionnaire to almost all households (before April 1, 2020).
For 2020, some households will be mailed the actual questionnaire, most households will be mailed an online link to fill out the form, & everyone will have the opportunity to mail in the form if they choose not to fill it out online.
The most accurate & complete population data is submitted during this phase.
Non-Response Follow Up phase:
The Census Bureau hires 100s of thousands of people to go door-to-door to count every household that didn’t self-respond (after April 1, 2020).
Much more expensive than the self-response phase ($2 BILLION in 2010).
During this phase, the risk is greatest that people will be missed and the count will be inaccurate.
Areas with large shares of households that don’t self-respond are therefore “hard to count”. Almost every community will have some households that don’t self-respond. But some communities have as many as half of their households that need to be counted in person. We’ve mapped these communities to help ensure a fair and accurate 2020 Census.

3. Impact on counting young children (under age 5)
Next several slides from a 2017 presentation by Dr. William O’Hare, nationwide expert on the undercount of young children in the census.

4. The Net Undercount of Young Children in the U.S. Decennial Census
by William P. O’Hare at the CUNY Graduate Center December 2017

5. Key Findings
Young children have a higher net undercount rate and higher omissions rate than any other age group in the 2010 U.S. Census.
Undercount rates for children (age 0-17) are heterogeneous…young children need to be examined separately from older children.
Black and Hispanic young children have higher net undercount rates than others.

6. Net Undercount and Omissions
Source: Hogan and Griffin 2016

9. Why are young children left off census questionnaires?
People don’t know Census Bureau wants young children included (Nichols and Katz, U.S. Census Bureau, January 2016)
Parents don’t want to reveal young child to government (Census Bureau) – undocumented 1.5 million young children live in households with one or more undocumented adults (Migration Policy Institute)
Status of young children unclear to respondent … “residential ambiguity” (Martin 2007)

10. Relationship to householder is important
Types Children with low undercount rates
Types of children with relatively high undercount rates
Biological child
Adopted child
Step child
Grandchild
Other relative of Householder
Not related to Householder

18.
The map link is CENSUS HARD TO COUNT MAPS 2020 dot US
Brief overview of the map – first using the slides, then a demo of the actual online site
HTC DEFINITION:
Map highlights tracts that had the lowest share of households that mailed back their census form in 2010 (the “mail return rate”).
Any tract where 73% or fewer households mailed it back are “hard to count” – this is where the greatest effort will be made to count door-to-door, and where the greatest risk will be of missing people or not getting accurate data.
Corresponds to the worst 20% of tracts nationwide.

19. www.CensusHardToCountMaps2020.us Area search Location Results
We’ve made it easy to zoom to any county or state or locality.
Search by county name or state name
Also can search by CONGRESSIONAL or LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
For each district / area the map shows:
which tracts were hard to count in 2010 (and likely will be again in 2020)

20. www.CensusHardToCountMaps2020.us Will this tract be
hard-to-count in 2020?
The left hand panel provides statistics on the share of people in 2010 that had to be counted in person (their households didn’t mail back the form) – so even districts that have what seem like a good mail return rate, still had tens of thousands of people that needed to be counted manually
And the left hand panel also has information on the share of household with poor internet access – which I’ll talk more about in a moment
and other “populations at risk”
NOTE THAT THIS DOESN’T ADDRESS WHERE PEOPLE MAY BE FEARFUL/RELUCTANT TO FILL OUT GOVERNMENT SURVEY – WE DON’T HAVE THAT DATA – SO LOCAL GROUPS NEED TO BE AWARE OF THAT CONCERN AND RESPOND TO IT BASED ON LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Info on at-risk populations

21. Let me show an example from our Hard to Count map to illustrate how internet access may – or may not – help with self-response (showing that this is not an abstract concern).
Here is a tract in Brooklyn. 3,600 people live here, and in 2010 it was one of the hardest to count tracts nationwide – only 56% of its households mailed back their census forms.
But according to the FCC, between 60 and 80% of the households here have Internet access. So someone could say, it doesn’t matter if the 2010 mail return rate was low, these households can all use the online option in 2020 and the return rate will be much higher.
But when you examine the “populations at risk” section of our map for this tract, you can see that why filling out a census form – online or otherwise – may not be a high priority for many households in this community.
For example, the tract’s population is predominantly Black and Latino.

22. ALMOST THREE-QUARTERS of its households are renters – a characteristic that the Census Bureau says is highly correlated with low survey response rates.

23. ALMOST HALF of the households are headed by single parents, with most of those with children under 18.

24. ALMOST 50% of the population is foreign-born – and many of those residents arrived here relatively recently (since 2000).

25. ALMOST HALF of the tract’s residents are either in poverty or close to it.
In sum… people of color, many of whom are busy single parents and/or recent immigrants with low incomes in rented housing – it paints a picture of a community that needs to be fairly and accurately counted, but with competing day-to-day priorities that won’t simply be solved by an online census form.
ALSO, some updates in the works:
Library locations (internet access, general help with census questionnaire)
Maps of other “populations at risk” of being undercounted (with current Census pop estimates)
Download data by county along w/tract map
Time for online demo?

26. Other resources Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Fact sheets and state/city/congress district tables of HTC pop.
“Counting for Dollars” analysis of federal/state funding dependent on accurate census data
White papers on citizenship question, privacy concerns, health care implications of census, and much more
The Census Project
NALEO
Census Bureau “ROAM” online map

27. Map examples See https://www.CensusHardtoCountMaps2020.us

28. Contact for questions, additional information:
Steven Romalewski
Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center, CUNY