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Public Service Announcement: If you haven't done so, go online and complete the 2020 Census for your household! Make a difference by encouraging everyone you know to do the same. If you've ever done any genealogy or even just noted the population of a place, you can thank the decennial census. Of course, it also helps your area receive its fair share of funding for schools, transit, and other important infrastructure. Biggest of all is fair legislative representation, which is more crucial than ever.
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I really do not understand the lack of participation in Census counts by so many people! I know with absolute certainty that a measurable number of those non-participants have written something political or societal on a social media site in the past few months. They can do that, why can they not count themselves?
It just seems to me to be so incredibly self-centered, especially from the folks who put their hands out and say gimme gimme gimme the free government stuff. Well ladies and gentlemen in order to get the free government stuff you’ve got to be counted so the government knows how much free stuff to spread around.
As Dicey indicated, I've been working as a Census enumerator. It's given me a facinating look into the inner workings of the census, as well as required me to interact (safely and frequently from a distance) with a lot of people that aren't in my typical social circle.
It is disheartening to realize that a lot of people simply refuse to participate. As a Census worker this is also incredibly frustrating.
Reasons vary. For people living in 'Group Quarters' (places where people who are typically not related live together - these include nursing homes, fraternities/sororities, work-camps, rehabilitation centers, prisons etc) a big reason is concern about sharing personal data. For example, HIPPA protects and prevents sharing patient-doctor records, and many nursing homes are hesitant to participate for this reason, even though we are HIPPA compliant (under TItle 13 of the US Code... I could even cite the various paragraphs). Others, like domestic shelters are dealing with clients who fear for their safety. Also, while everyone is required by law to assist with the collecting of the census, many are overworked and feel like this is "not their job". I'm sympathetic to a point, because I know their employer doesn't give them extra time to help complete the census, but it is in fact their responsibility and their job.
THen there's the 'non-respondent' - people who live in "normal" places like homes and apartments and didn't respond to the average SEVEN ATTEMPTS we make by mail before we send a person knocking on their door. Some of them are disorganized sorts who toss all their mail. Many are deeply distrustful of government and think its all a way of tracking them (a bit absurd - there are far better nad more reliable methods, and in any event not in the purvue of the Census bureau). I've had people scream at me to 'Get the f___ off my property". Ironically these people are often renters, so NOT their property. Others are incredibly transient - one of the questions on the form is "other than here, is there a place where you sometimes stay" - it's meant to avoid double-counting people. Anyway, one guy told me he had at least SEVEN places he stayed at on any given month.
Immigrants (lawful or not) are often fearful we'll contact ICE - even though we cannot share information with ANY other agency BY LAW, and information MUST be aggregated in such a way that an one cannot deduce information about an individual or family - for example if there's only one black family in a town racial data will be pooled with nearby towns.
Regardless,
@Dicey has an important point. The Federal budget was $4.4T before we started throwing money around willy-nilly with Covid relief packages. About $1.3T is discretionary spending (half again already earmarked for 'Defense'). How that gets distributed comes down to where people live. In some areas like the districts I cover
each respondent results in over $2,000 in local spending. IF you could donate $2k of someone else's money to your community just by filling out a survey, would you? Because that is EXACTLY what the Census does.
Then there's the political reasons... the number of delegates who represent your state is a function of how many people respond to the census. Fewer responses? Less representation. And when the state government looks to see where to put schools, hospitals, broadband internet and other infrastructure it relies on census data and federal dollars to do so.
/rant.
