US Census Results And Fallout For 5 States

[General Mung Beans]

I felt the 10 questions weren't "invasive" enough. Who your spouse and children are is a matter of public record anyway, is it not? The only thing the Census resolves is where those people are.

Considering the main point of the Census is to find out where and how many people there are, what exactly do you think they also need to know?

I also was disappointed; I wish the census would ask for your religion. Why? Well, as a historian of American religion, I know firsthand how useful it would be to be able to look every ten years and see how many Americans were of what religion, denomination, etc, all the way back over two hundred years. While I understand why the census doesn't ask for religion (fears of discrimination, I believe), I still think it's a shame.

Probably fears that cultic types will say "The Antichrist/Xenu/Low-Carb Dieticians Are Out To Profile Us and Persecute Us!" and not respond.

[Broomstick]

Also, virtually every group with an interest of their own would like to add census questions - if we let them all then it would be a bloated monstrosity of a questionnaire. There's enough trouble getting people to respond to just a few questions, after all.

[houser2112]

This is nothing sinister - information on school age children, for example, can be a factor in funding for school districts. This is generally considered a social good.

Not sure if you were talking directly to me, or if you were just using the space to make this general point, but I agree with you. I actually think the "long form" should be "the form".

That used to be known at the "long form" - lots more questions. I haven't seen it myself, I deal strictly with the short form at work, but that information is on line.

Someone else pointed that out to me, and I was disappointed it didn't address religion at all.

Studies have shown that sending the mailings in advance of the form increases the rate of people responding and mailing the form back. The cost of 3-4 mailings is far cheaper than sending someone such as myself to your house (average cost for that is $56 - that's average. Some of the scenarios we covered in training would be quite time consuming and cost much more than that)

OK, I feel better about it now. It's just wasted on me, because I look forward to it.

You have NO clue how fucking expensive doing just the short form is. Or how difficult it can be just to have people answer 5 or 6 questions, much less the long form.

True, I don't have any idea, but I do know that it's significant, but necessary. However, I have to believe that Cost(long):Cost(short) < Length(long):Length(short). Or, stated more plainly, if the long form is 5x as long as the short form, it does not cost 5x as much to process it, due to the presence of so many sunk costs. Like I said before, as long as we're paying these sunk costs anyway, we should make it worth our while.

Does your point about the difficulty of getting people to even answer the short form, mean that if there was only the long form that total returns would decrease? I hope I'm not abnormally civic-minded.

[eion]

That used to be known at the "long form" - lots more questions. I haven't seen it myself, I deal strictly with the short form at work, but that information is on line.

Someone else pointed that out to me, and I was disappointed it didn't address religion at all.

By law the Census Bureau can't ask questions about religious affiliation as part of a mandatory Census.

[Broomstick]

Does your point about the difficulty of getting people to even answer the short form, mean that if there was only the long form that total returns would decrease? I hope I'm not abnormally civic-minded.

I am under oath not to discuss a lot of stuff about my census work, so I may not be able to satisfy everyone's curiosity. However - YES, if we only had the long form responses would drop drastically. You are unusually civic-minded.

I want to emphasize that most people aren't rude... they just have other concerns, sometimes quite overwhelming.

[DudeGuyMan]

Hey, I have a question.



This guy is from Colombia and a native Spanish-speaker. What box would he check? Is he Hispanic, or just a black guy from Colombia?

[eion]

^ “What box does he want to check?” is the question you should be asking. It's about self-identification, not pigeon-holing people. He can also write in his preferred self-identification if none of the provided options suit him.

If you read the form, you'd see there are multiple places to write in your own self-identity. He could mark "Columbian" for question 8 and "Black, African-Am., or Negro" for question 9, or decline to identitfy as Hispanic origin in Question 8 and write in "Black Columbian" under "Some Other Race" for question 9.

[Broomstick]

This guy is from Colombia and a native Spanish-speaker. What box would he check? Is he Hispanic, or just a black guy from Colombia?

The official correct answer to the question you actually asked is that "he checks those boxes he feels apply to himself".

However, the answer to the question I think you intended to ask is as follows:
1) Under "Are you of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin" he checks "Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin", then under "What is that origin?" he writes "Colombian"

2) Under race he checks off "Black, African American, or Negro". If any other categories apply he can check off those, so it could be almost anything - "white", "Chinese", "Native American" (write in tribe) and so forth.

However, he doesn't have to mark off any sort of Latin origin if he doesn't want to, and if he wants to put "Other - HUMAN" under race that's OK, too. The census would prefer people stick to the list, but knows they won't.

As an example - the various news agencies reported that Barack Obama just marked "black" under race on his census questionnaire. He certainly could have marked "white" as well, as he's really just as much European as African in heritage, but he chose not to.

[ArmorPierce]

Some hispanics are deeply offended by this because they see it as a balkanization of the group into these smaller subcategories.

That's interesting. One friend of mine who is from Peru, originally, actually liked that he was able to specify the "subcagetory" (if you will). He says that he is always offended on forms when he has to simplify things into just "Hispanic." He complains that Americans think that everyone south of the Rio Grande is exactly the same, ethnically.

In my experience, white-hispanics tend to be offended about being lumped into the same category. I haven't really encountered the reverse though.

[Soontir C'boath]

Some hispanics are deeply offended by this because they see it as a balkanization of the group into these smaller subcategories.

That's interesting. One friend of mine who is from Peru, originally, actually liked that he was able to specify the "subcagetory" (if you will). He says that he is always offended on forms when he has to simplify things into just "Hispanic." He complains that Americans think that everyone south of the Rio Grande is exactly the same, ethnically.

In my experience, white-hispanics tend to be offended about being lumped into the same category. I haven't really encountered the reverse though.

A Columbian friend of my said there is a hierarchy and that white Hispanics (closer to Spain) are more 'pure' than the others.

[ArmorPierce]

I don't really see this one-identity in the spanish-speaking community neither. Perhaps within the sub-groups and at times a mashing. Puerto Ricans tend to hang out with Ricans, Dominicans with dominicans, and other hispanic people from other spanish speaking countries seems to have a healthy dislike of dominicans and ricans.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Just as the census bureau does not release information to other agencies, it does not collect information from other agencies.

I hope this isn't a stupid question, but I am very interested in the workings of the Census Bureau, because I find the whole enterprise to be fascinating in its scope. But if the Bureau does not release information to other agencies, how is it then decided, as you go on to mention, what districts get more funding for social programs, etc.? Do analysts within the Bureau essentially make judgments based on the data, and then tell other federal agencies what to do? Or is a selective sample of information passed on?

[Questor]

Just as the census bureau does not release information to other agencies, it does not collect information from other agencies.

I hope this isn't a stupid question, but I am very interested in the workings of the Census Bureau, because I find the whole enterprise to be fascinating in its scope. But if the Bureau does not release information to other agencies, how is it then decided, as you go on to mention, what districts get more funding for social programs, etc.? Do analysts within the Bureau essentially make judgments based on the data, and then tell other federal agencies what to do? Or is a selective sample of information passed on?

My understanding is that the aggregate data is released, but not the actual survey responses - at least for a really long time.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The Race Question - AH, the race question. Infamous number 8 on the mailed-out form.

Almost everyone I've met who's had a question about the census has had a question about the seeming redundancy of the "are you of any particular hispanic origin" question AND the general race question.

Other than that, the biggest controvery was the inclusion of the word "Negro" on the form. It seems heinously offensive on the face of it, and some of my coworkers were somewhat shocked that it was allowed to be on there. As I understand it, though, it wasn't on the 2000 form. (I might be wrong about that; this is based off that understanding.)

From this, the only thing I can suppose is that a sufficient enough fraction of Americans passed over checking the "black/African American" box to write-in "Negro" that it was decided by the powers that be that that fraction of people meant substantially or identically the same thing, and added the check-box for them.

At the heart of things, the Census isn't about telling people what they are. If a census taker meets a man with skin as dark as a native Nigerian, speaking English with a French accent and insists that his race is "Englishman," then he is an Englishman. It's not our job - not our place - to tell him he's black, or African-American, or Negro, nor to tell him he's a Frenchman, or to insist he list the country of his birth, which for all we know might have been Switzerland. Likewise, it's not nearly out of the realm of imagination for a man with skin typical of Caucasians, born in South Africa and emigrated to America, to want to call himself an African-American. If he says he is, he is.


I also got some laughs out of the gender question, too. I always asked, and I usually got a laugh, or "isn't it plain?" The response to that is that we are required to ask, as we want to find out how the respondant identifies themselves, not to identify the respondant.

[Broomstick]

Just as the census bureau does not release information to other agencies, it does not collect information from other agencies.

I hope this isn't a stupid question, but I am very interested in the workings of the Census Bureau, because I find the whole enterprise to be fascinating in its scope. But if the Bureau does not release information to other agencies, how is it then decided, as you go on to mention, what districts get more funding for social programs, etc.? Do analysts within the Bureau essentially make judgments based on the data, and then tell other federal agencies what to do? Or is a selective sample of information passed on?

My understanding is that the aggregate data is released, but not the actual survey responses - at least for a really long time.

Aggregate and statistical information stripped of all information that could personally identify individuals is what is released in the short term, including the number of people in a given area, which is what is used to determine governmental representation.

Access to more detailed information, including that which can identify individuals, is released after 72 years.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Aggregate and statistical information stripped of all information that could personally identify individuals is what is released in the short term, including the number of people in a given area, which is what is used to determine governmental representation.

Access to more detailed information, including that which can identify individuals, is released after 72 years.

Why is it released at all, I wonder?

Is it purely so the interested can perform research on their own ancestry and origin? Is there another sort of compelling reason?

[TimothyC]

Why is it released at all, I wonder?

Is it purely so the interested can perform research on their own ancestry and origin? Is there another sort of compelling reason?

It's government gathered, so the way I understand it, the data is public domain unless there is a compelling reason for it not to be released, which in this case is privacy. Census data is great for genealogy, if you know were people were 70-80 years ago, otherwise, it's a crap-shoot.

[Broomstick]

Aggregate and statistical information stripped of all information that could personally identify individuals is what is released in the short term, including the number of people in a given area, which is what is used to determine governmental representation.

Access to more detailed information, including that which can identify individuals, is released after 72 years.

Why is it released at all, I wonder?

Is it purely so the interested can perform research on their own ancestry and origin? Is there another sort of compelling reason?

As noted, it's information gathered by public funds. Unless there's compelling reason to keep it secret, like national security, at some point it should be released (you know the information the census collects - you know as well as I do that there's nothing affecting national security there). There is, however, the mandate to keep things confidential. Well, after 72 years most of the respondents to a census will be dead, so how could their privacy be violated?

(For further information - a respondent needs to be at least 15 to answer the census. 15+72=87 Yes, some people live long enough to see the information they gave release, but damn few)

In addition to the genealogists, historians also have some interest in the raw data. Stephen J. Gould wrote an essay "The Politics of Census" where he delves into some of what going back over old data can lead to in the way of knowledge about the past. Coincidentally for this thread, it centers around the question of race.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Okay, I get that for the most part, but don't we also collect names and such for instances when there's minor children under the age of fifteen living in a household with an older parent? (Which is, admittedly, the majority situation for minor children under the age of fifteen?)

IE, the latest census to be released into the public domain would be the 1930 Census. 1940 will be released in 2012, and this one (2010) will be released in 2082.

Don't we have information on the names of the minor children living in 1930 with adult respondants who were counted in the 1930 census, and wouldn't we have that same information from 1940? Maybe we didn't collect that information about children back then (simply getting a number like "three children living here",) but I'm almost certain (unless there's been a major gap somewhere in my training - entirely possible given how frantic this has all been,) that we do learn the names and such of minor children from the adults living with them; do you think the census will be filtering out all information pertaining to people who were under the age of fifteen come 2082?

[Broomstick]

No, of course not - ALL census information is released 72 years after the census. So yes, there will be some 72 year old people whose information is released. I'm not sure this is a problem - how many people are living at the same address at 72 as at birth?

When the 72 year rule was set most people didn't live that long. Perhaps in the future they may make the interval longer. Perhaps not. I don't think anyone is raising a stink about it.

[ShadowDragon8685]

No, they're not. I was just curious.