More Troubling Signs for Census 2020

The 2020 Census in the U.S. is in dire straits, as I've noted many times over the past couple of years, including the recent comment about the impending use of the internet as a platform for responding to the census. Other countries do this, and it may well help with the response rate, but of course only among those with internet access. 

A blog post today from the Census Project points out that rural counties, in particular, are prevalent among the hard to count (HTC) places in the country. The source of their information is a report from William O'Hare, who is one of the world's foremost applied demographers.

In a new report issued this week, demographer Bill O’Hare says “little has been written about the special challenges that will make some rural areas and populations difficult to enumerate accurately.” 

Dr. O’Hare’s report notes five particular regions or populations in rural America that will be particularly hard to count in the 2020 Census: 

Blacks in the South
Hispanics in the rural Southwest
American Indians living on reservations and Alaska Natives
Residents of deep Appalachia
Migrant and seasonal farmworkers 

O’Hare’s report says a majority of Hard-To-Count (HTC) counties (79 percent) in the U.S. are rural areas. Overall, 16 percent of all the most rural counties fall into the HTC category.

Unfortunately, there is nothing going on in Congress at the moment that can offer any hope that these problems will be worked out in time to provide us with a good census count scarcely two years from now.