Counting People Out : Why the Census Bureau undercount hurts this area

The U.S. Census Bureau has refused to readjust its annual population estimates to account for an incredible 5.3 million people it missed in the 1990 census--even though its experts admit that such an adjustment would make the census more accurate.

The bureau tried to explain--unpersuasively--that the 1.6% undercount was relatively small. Census Bureau director Barbara Everitt Bryant said that if an adjustment, which would clearly benefit the growing urban areas in the West, were done, it would be “impossible” to accurately adjust for each of the 44,055 geographic areas for which population estimates are produced. Say what?

However relatively small Bryant may think the undercount is, it’s no small potatoes to Californians. Census experts have admitted that areas with significant numbers of homeless people, as well as large minority populations--like California--get shortchanged in the census count. The key effect of the bureau’s decision is to leave unchanged the statistical basis under which $60 billion in federal funds are divvied up among cities.

The city of Inglewood was hit especially hard by this decision. About 10% of its population is estimated not to have been counted; in Los Angeles, about 200,000 people were overlooked. Both cities have joined with others in a lawsuit to force the government to make the adjustments. A federal judge in New York is expected to rule in the case this year.

There may be a quicker remedy. The incoming Clinton Administration could overturn the ruling. The people most likely not to have been counted are poor, renters and minorities, people who as voters are more likely to be Democrats; a Commerce Department run by Clinton nominee Ronald H. Brown, presently chairman of the Democratic Party, could be expected to look to correct the undercount. The Commerce Department is the Census Bureau’s boss.

Partisanship should never have entered this discussion, but the reality is that the census is in part about political power. Power aside, right is right. Even the Census Bureau’s own experts agree: The 1990 census is not as accurate now as it should be.