Census Pins Hopes on Fewer Questions

Hoping to get more people than usual to actually fill out and mail back their Census 2010 questionnaires, the U.S. Census Bureau will try asking only 10 questions about each member of the household.

In testimony before Congress, Census director Robert M. Groves told lawmakers that the Census 2010 form (sample) will be the one of the shortest questionnaires in the history of the decennial census.

For all census forms not returned, census takers must go door-to-door and attempt to interview the residents. According to Groves, these post-census interviews costs taxpayers “scores of millions” of dollars for every 1 percent of forms not returned. “If the American people are worried about the deficit, here’s something they can do,” he told Congress.

Groves also told Congress that he fears the recession, resulting in numerous home foreclosures and increasing homeless, will make it harder for census takers to find many residents who fail to return the census forms.

Data from the decennial census are used to determine how many seats each state gets in Congress, to make decisions about what community services to provide, and to distribute $400 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year.

Later this fall, local and regional Census Bureau offices will be seeking over 3.1 million applications for census taker jobs to begin in late April 2010.

Also See:
About Census 2010: Why it’s Important to You
Census 2010 Jobs
What Census Takers Do

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