Census Undercount: An Historical and Contemporary Sociological Issue*

Abstract

As the public policy uses of U. S. census data have expanded in recent decades, census undercount has become a contentious public issue. Concern centers on the fact that persons that are economically and socially disadvantaged are omitted at higher rates than others. In this paper we outline some of the contributions which sociologists can make to the undercount debate. First, the uses of census data are reviewed, with emphasis on how coverage errors affect social science research. Next, a conceptual model of the census enumeration process is offered, and its social system and census process components are described.

Estimating Local Fiscal Multipliers

“…The coverage of the Census enumeration has been a topic of intense research and debate among statisticians, demographers, and policy makers in the last thirty years (see Brown et al (1999) for a broad overview of this literature, and Brunell (2002), Rosenthal (2000), Belin and Rolph (1994), Robinson et al (1993), Fay et al (1988), West and Fein (1990), Ericksen and Kadane (1985), Freedman (1993), Swanson and McKibben (2010)). It is widely acknowledged that due to the many technical challenges associated with a physical enumeration, Census counts do not constitute an a priori better measure of true population than other statistical and administrative methods.…”

The Undercount of Young Children in the U.S. Decennial Census

“…In the 1980, 1990 was an ongoing topic of debate (Choldin 1994). In the 2000 Census, the Census Bureau was planning to make adjustments for undercounts, but in the end the Census Bureau decided that such adjustments should not be made based on technical grounds.…”

“…This represents a 5 % difference for all children and an 8 % difference for Hispanic children. West and Fein (1990) as well as Clogg and colleagues (1989) review several ways in which the Census undercounts affect social science research results. Clogg and his colleagues (1989, p. 559) conclude, "Because undercount rates (or coverage rates) vary by age, race, residence and other factors typically studied in social science research, important conceptual difficulties arise in using Census results to corroborate sampling frames or to validate survey results."…”

“…There are numerous reports that address the issue of why people are missed (omissions) or counted twice (erroneously enumerations) in the Census (de la Puente 1993; Martin and de la Puente 1993; Schwede and Terry 2013;West and Fein 1990) but I am not aware of any publication which focuses on the reasons young children have a high net undercount other…”

How low response among Latino immigrants will lead to differential undercount if the United States’ 2020 census includes a question on sensitive citizenship

“…The specific ways in which the Census Bureau's system of data collection and analysis leads to differential undercount stem in part from the characteristics of the population being enumerated but, also, from the "structural" characteristics of a geographic area -housing patterns and living arrangements, as well as local socioeconomic context [10][11][12]. For better or worse, the population and housing characteristics of the San Joaquin Valley make it a "natural laboratory" for exploring the extent to which adding a sensitive question such as the citizenship question to the decennial census affects census accuracy in a geographic area with concentrated immigrant settlement.…”