COLUMN ONE : Ready to Count Noses and a Whole Lot More : The 1990 census will reveal who, where and how many of us there are. But power and money also move with the numbers.

Two-hundred years after the fledging nation first took stock of itself, the 1990 census is about to survey a country that has grown from nearly 4 million people to 250 million, that is beginning to age but that is still forging a new identity.

The census will measure the growth of a society founded by European immigrants where, today, Asians and Pacific islanders are growing faster--at a rate of 70%--than any other immigrant group.

Besides counting heads, the census tells us a lot about the way we live. One conclusion likely to emerge from the 1990 census is that barely half of all U.S. households are still presided over by married couples.

The 1790 census was conducted to determine how many representatives each state was entitled to in the House of Representatives. Today, the political import of the census is measured in dollars as well as seats in Congress.

“Power and money move with this count,” said Barbara Everitt Bryant, director of the Census Bureau, during a recent speech in Washington. “That is why the results are so vital to people in politics and government. That is why techniques of counting people can be so controversial.”

The distribution of $73 billion in federal aid to cities and counties is keyed to the population breakdowns provided by the census. Moreover, as many as 18 new congressional districts could be added to the nation’s political geography. California could get seven of the new districts, including one in Orange County, thus becoming the first state to send 50 or more representatives to Congress.

Such stakes stir controversy. There were nearly 40 lawsuits filed contesting the way the census was conducted in 1980. The first legal challenge to the 1990 census was filed over a year ago.

Beginning in early March, census takers--some of them traveling by horseback, snowshoe and dog sled--will begin fanning out across the most remote sectors of the country. In large cities, the Census Bureau is recruiting homeless people and gang members, among others, at $7.50 an hour to take census questionnaires into the toughest neighborhoods. At the same time, questionnaires will be mailed out to the vast majority of American households.

The information gathered during the six-month process will supplement what we already know about the last decade, based on interim surveys conducted by the Census Bureau and other demographic sources. But while the surveys provide the broad strokes, the census results will fill in the details.

For example, computerized maps will track, region by region, census tract by census tract, the settlement patterns of the greatest wave of immigration since early this century.

The Census Bureau estimates that 8.2 million people, mostly Asians and Latinos, have come to the United States during the last decade, almost as many as the number of European immigrants who arrived during the first decade of the century. Latinos are the most numerous, growing at a rate of 39% over the last decade.

The census is expected to show that California has gained more people--5 million-plus--than any other state, although Alaska’s growth rate, 42%, appears to have been the highest over the last 10 years.

The Los Angeles region will probably emerge in 1990 as the most populous metropolitan area in the nation with 8.7 million people, compared to New York’s 8.6 million.

For Los Angeles County, the 1990 census is expected to mark the end of the white majority. With a projected growth rate of only 3%, the white population will have fallen from 53% in 1980 to about 46% in 1990. During the decade, the second-most-numerous group, the county’s Latinos, should grow from 27% to about 35% of the population. Asians are likely to make up about 12% of the county’s population and blacks about 11%.

In Orange County, demographers predict that the census will finally topple the long-held stereotype that the county is a homogeneous stronghold of well-heeled whites, depicting instead a region that includes a cosmopolitan mix of Latinos, Indochinese and others.

The census also will offer a series of snapshots of our educational, financial and physical well-being. The age group 35 to 44 figures to emerge as the most educated, with more high school and college graduates than older or younger age groups.

According to Census Bureau surveys, the median household income of Americans, $30,000, will be up from 1980, but the progress won’t be shared by all age groups. For example, the median income of householders under 25 years old fell 10% between 1980 and 1989. So far, people 65 and over have enjoyed the greatest increase in median annual income--nearly 14%--thanks to increases in Social Security and greater pension participation.

Aging Population

With the population expanding by 10% since 1980, the nation’s median age has moved well past 30 and the fastest-growing age group is one of the oldest. The number of people 95 to 99 has nearly doubled.

Historically, the census has been a measure of the sea changes in American culture. The 1920 census, noting that the majority of Americans were city dwellers, marked America’s change from an agrarian society to a primarily urban one. The 1950 census revealed that for the first time women outnumbered men in this country.

Census Bureau officials anticipate that the 1990 census will document the continuing concentration of population and political power in the West. The census will also shed light on what many demographers see as the most significant movement of people within the United States during the last decade--the return of blacks to the South. For the first time since 1900, a majority of blacks (56%) now live in the southern United States.

As different as the country is, there are historical echoes from the first census when George Washington fretted that the 1790 head count was missing too many people.

Today, concern about omitting people has become a dominant issue of the census. It caused at least one high-ranking Census Bureau official to quit, provoked a lawsuit and prompted accusations of political meddling. The last time it was conducted, the census missed an estimated 3 million people, a number equal to 75% of the nation’s population counted in the 1790 census.

The legal dispute this year is focusing attention on how best to count the people, mostly city dwellers, who are hardest to find--illegal aliens, newcomers who do not speak English, people without homes, families living in garages and vans and the wariest and most hostile of the urban poor.

The Census Bureau has developed a controversial post-census survey for double-checking whether this year’s count is accurate.

Recount Targets

The survey would target a number of urban neighborhoods where the census habitually undercounts people. The targeted neighborhoods would be subjected to an intense recount. The list of recounted residents would be compared with those who responded to the census questionnaires. The percentage difference between the two counts would be projected to other, similar areas and, ultimately, provide a basis for estimating the nation’s hidden population.

Use of the survey was rejected by the Reagan Administration on grounds that it would be disruptive and too costly. This led to a lawsuit by several cities, including Los Angeles, accusing the former Administration of encouraging an undercount. If there is a substantial undercount, large cities, which tend to be Democratic strongholds, stand to lose political representation as well as millions of dollars in government aid.

A settlement of the cities’ lawsuit last summer requires the Bush Administration to reconsider incorporating the survey in the 1990 census. But it does not compel the Administration to make a decision about the survey until July, 1991--several months after the congressional reapportionment process is under way.

Proponents of the follow-up survey are talking about reinstituting the lawsuit before the April census. At the same time, the critics concede that the Census Bureau, in partnership with communities across the country, is spending more money--twice as much as in 1980--and trying harder than ever before to find people. Nationwide, the Census Bureau plans to spend $2.5 billion and employ close to 400,000 people.

In Los Angeles, city officials have allocated $500,000 to a campaign to encourage compliance with the census. In fact, the Census Bureau here is recruiting gang members to help count people in tough neighborhoods.

“We are hiring some gang members as well as homeless people,” said Tommy Jacquette, a community awareness specialist for the Census Bureau.

Jacquette said the enumerators are assigned in teams of eight to 10 people to distribute census questionnaires and do follow-up interviews in the neighborhoods they know best.

To try to pin down the location of every household in America, the Census Bureau collects addresses from the U.S. Postal Service and from commercial mailing lists as well as conducting field checks. The checks are meant to turn up unconventional residences such as garages where families have taken refuge.

For this census, the bureau also has asked municipalities to compare the bureau’s block-by-block household count against the dwelling unit files of local tax assessors and utility companies.

On March 20 and 21, the Census Bureau will conduct a survey of missions, shelters and impromptu sleeping quarters on sidewalks and beaches, in parks and underpasses. For their own protection, census takers will not go into abandoned buildings where people are known to sleep, but will wait outside and attempt to interview people as they emerge in the morning.

The success of the census depends, in part, on the bureau’s ability to persuade people that all information collected will remain confidential--that the questionnaires won’t be used to track down illegal aliens (a question on citizenship is included, but not on immigration status) and that landlords, building inspectors and social workers won’t be able to find out which houses are overcrowded.

But the results of this census will be available, for the first time, on computerized maps of the entire country. And while the Census Bureau says it will not map the characteristics of each household or even of each block, the characteristics of so-called “census blocks”--areas smaller than census tracts--will be available.

Some people worry that maps drawn to that scale will come too close to identifying homes and neighborhoods.

“It could be a real problem,” said Barbara Bailar, executive director of the American Statistical Assn. and a former associate director of the Census Bureau.

However, other observers, including the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, believe that the Census Bureau can protect individual privacy at the same time it strives for an accurate count this year.

Accuracy is an especially important goal for certain ethnic groups that, over the years, have been missed at a greater rate than the rest of the population.

Census Bureau officials estimated that they missed 7% of the nation’s Latino population and nearly 6% of the black population in 1980 while omitting only about 1.5% of the country’s population as a whole.

A dress rehearsal for the 1990 census indicated that improvements still need to be made. Conducted in St. Louis, the 1988 dress rehearsal missed 2.3% of the white population and 8.1% of the black, according to the General Accounting Office.

For blacks, who are not growing nearly as rapidly as either Latinos or Asians, the new census will usher in an era of opportunity and risk. The black population is expected to increase from 26.8 million to 31 million, a growth rate of 13%.

The number of predominantly black big cities is expected to grow from 25 to more than 50 when the final count is in.

At the same time, migration trends from North to South and big city to suburb, could deplete the populations of 20 of the 24 congressional districts now represented by blacks.

The decline of the black population in the city of Los Angeles, from 16% in the early 1970s to 12% today, has led some city officials to predict that black representation on the City Council could drop from three seats to two or one.

Here and elsewhere, the political challenge in changing black districts will come mostly from Latinos, as they move into neighborhoods vacated by the new black suburbanites. The trend could signal a decade of unprecedented ethnic tension in some of the nation’s large cities, said Cheryl Miller, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political Studies in Washington.

In the nation’s first census, U.S. marshals came to each door to take the names of heads of households and to count all free persons and slaves residing there.

This year, beginning in late March, the Census Bureau will send out census forms to 88 million households.

Most people will receive the bureau’s short form that asks for name, sex, age, marital status, race and whether the person is of “Spanish or Hispanic origin.” Several questions will be asked about people’s homes--the type of building, how many rooms it includes, whether it is rented or owned, and the amount of rent paid or the value of the home.

One of every six households is supposed to receive a much longer questionnaire designed to help the Census Bureau flesh out the characteristics of American society in 1990.

The long form will ask the number of vehicles per household, the levels of education, marriage and divorce and, for the first time, will seek to find out whether people living together regard themselves as unmarried partners or merely roommates.

New Categories

Moreover, reflecting the changing fabric of American home life, the census will provide categories for stepchildren and children living with grandparents.

The questionnaires that come in the mail will be printed in English but will include telephone numbers for assistance in 32 other languages.

The Census Bureau estimates that 78% of the people who receive questionnaires will fill them out and return them. Down from 83% in 1980, this year’s predicted response rate is still overly optimistic in the view of the General Accounting Office, which expects less cooperation from a public that is being deluged by unsolicited mail.

Moreover, the census long form, which takes about 45 minutes to complete, could challenge the patience of an increasingly impatient society.

“In a world where the average person spends about four seconds on any single television channel before changing the station, do you really think it’s realistic to expect people to spend 43 minutes filling out a census questionnaire?” asked Peter Hart, a pollster who has been devising public opinion surveys for 15 years.

The Census Bureau remains confident that a great majority of people will respond if they can be persuaded of the importance of the census.

To that end, the bureau has hired four advertising agencies, recorded a rap song, plastered the sides of buses with census promotionals, arranged for census information centers at Headstart programs and 7-Eleven stores, incorporated census messages in school curricula and even written pulpit speeches for priests and ministers.