The census only happens once every 10 years, and the information it brings in can change how local areas are represented in Congress and in turn the federal dollars they receive. So as forms get sent out across the country, let’s take a look at how census dollars impact communities and how some areas are getting the word out to make sure they don’t miss out on funding opportunities.
In Edgecombe County, North Carolina missing out on being counted is exactly what happened during the 2000 census and it’s affected the area ever since. NewsHour and Patchwork Nation report:
Flooding from Hurricane Floyd put 40 percent of Edgecombe under water and forced thousands of people from their homes and into temporary housing only about 5 months before the Census began.
As a result, Edgecombe County leaders say many residents were missed in the 2000 count. In a county that’s been suffering through high unemployment and other economic malaise for more than 15 years, missing parts of the population in the Census–and the millions of federal dollars that could cost–is a major thing.
Beyond the data collected and the state funds that will be distributed as a result, another real-time effect of the census is new jobs right now. There are thousands of opportunities for temporary work as a census collector, but even with high unemployment rates, finding bilingual workers is a challenge, the Wall Street Journal found:
In Texas, the Census is still looking for 25,000 applicants from so-called hard-to-count communities—population groups that have low participation rates in the Census due to language or cultural barriers and educational gaps, among other factors.
In Los Angeles, Voto Latino has come up with some creative solutions to reach out to immigrant communities, NPR reports:
One of Voto Latino’s strategies was to develop a new mobile phone application to be used in Los Angeles County. Users download it, learn about the census and then take a quiz on what they’ve learned….
“The reason we’re starting to use this mobile online piece of it is that we found that 25 percent of iPhone users are of Latino decent,” says Maria Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino’s executive director. She adds that most of them are young.
People living in rural areas and transient populations, like students, are also hard to find and account for. WPSU in Central Pennsylvania has both, and lost two Congressional seats after the 2000 census as a result. This time around, the state is hoping to reverse that.
How did the census come to be? This video is one of the most comprehensive I’ve seen on census history, so watch and learn about the history of the census from 1790 through 2000.