Census Bureau Polishes Plan for Hard-to-Count Americans

The Capitol dome could be viewed from the corner, but not much else looked familiar or welcoming when three members of Congress landed at 8th and O streets in downtown Washington the other morning.

Broken beer bottles were crunching under Rep. Xavier Becerra’s black loafers. Piles of trash that nobody had bothered to collect were sprinkled along the sidewalk. The corner gas station was boarded up and the brick row houses were barred at their doors.

Becerra, a Los Angeles Democrat, and two of his House colleagues were there to make a point: It is no longer possible for census takers to count every person in America one at a time--and the reason is neighborhoods like this.

In 1990--in a microcosm of the undercount that plagued the overall tally--109 people in this 20-block tract were missed despite the Census Bureau’s best efforts. And judging from the looks of things, they were probably people who could have used some of the federal help that never came because they were never counted.

What brought Becerra and Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to this bleak block on a brilliant autumn day is an issue that recently divided Congress for weeks: whether to let the Census Bureau count 90% of the population the old-fashioned way and estimate the rest, with a statistical method called sampling.

The trio sought to show the world that head-counting in the 21st century is obsolete. They knocked at the first door.

“Hello! We’re members of Congress!” Shays announced as an unsuspecting Theodore Williams, who was visiting his grandparents’ house, approached to find not only the three lawmakers but also a television camera crew and several reporters standing in the yard.

Williams struggled to open the door and, with everybody watching, spilled his tea. By the time it was over, the contingent had established that only a little dog named Millie was home.

On to the next door, where a woman in a white apron appeared behind a barred screen door to find Shays and Maloney on her stoop.

“You have to come back later,” the woman said. “I’m busy working on something.”

At a third house, no one answered. The fourth house was a group community home where poor mothers were being taught how to do a week’s grocery shopping on $9, an issue that proceeded to dominate the conversation among the House members.

The half-hour demonstration ended abruptly when the members’ buzzers went off, summoning them to a vote. Becerra stayed behind, surveying the rows of three-story buildings, basement apartments and boarded up doors.

“This is anywhere in America,” he said. “Change the architecture and add 20 degrees to the temperature, and this could be Los Angeles.”

Point made: Some Americans are just really hard to count.

The federal government has been trying to do it every 10 years since 1791, and every 10 years since then somebody has been unsatisfied with the results. Thomas Jefferson complained to George Washington after the first census that it probably wasn’t right. And to put into perspective how much harder the job has gotten since then, consider this: The entire population of the nation when Jefferson was around--4 million--is precisely the number the Census Bureau figures it missed in 1990 (demographers now say the undercount was especially dramatic in California, costing the state an estimated $500 million in federal aid).

Statistical mathematics is not the only proposed solution to making more accurate a census that has been plagued by public apathy, with response rates to the form mailed to every household sliding steadily since 1970.

As 2000 approaches, the Census Bureau is going to historic lengths to persuade Americans to carry out a task that is required by law but to many is about as appealing as cleaning out the rain gutters.

The bureau has lined up an unprecedented $100-million contract with a Madison Avenue advertising firm for a prime-time radio/TV blitz to tell people the census is coming. And it has whittled the questions to the fewest since 1820 and improved a design that was roundly denounced last time as ugly and hard to read.

The result: The Census Bureau has reduced the entire matter to one page, which it hopes Americans will find so undaunting that they might actually sit down and fill it out.

In about five months, demographers will test their innovations on the people of Sacramento, 11 counties around Columbia, S.C., and a Wisconsin Indian reservation in a dress rehearsal to see if they fly.

But even before the dry run, it can be safely said that somebody out there will not be happy. Indeed, almost nothing the federal government does regarding the census is done without some sort of attending flap.

The Clinton administration’s decision to allow mixed-race Americans to check off more than one racial category for the first time in history came after a national cultural debate.

The plan to pay millions to Young & Rubicam Inc. of New York for the slick ad campaign when free public service announcements were used in the past has been denounced by some as a waste of money. (Of course, radio and TV stations aired the 1990 spots at the unhelpful hour of 2 a.m.)

The latest flap is over the way the bureau chose to shorten the form--by limiting to five the number of spaces provided to write in the members of each household. There used to be enough space for seven people, but that would require a two-page form, which census officials fear would turn too many people off.

That means a couple with more than three children will have to leave some of the kids out.

The extra household members will not be ignored, the Census Bureau will just come back later to count them. That, in turn, means extended families who share a home--as is common in many immigrant communities--will not be fully counted the first time around.

That idea upsets immigrant-rights activists, who argue that much of the immigrant population is already dealing with severe language barriers in completing census forms and doesn’t need any more complications.

But the census is nothing if not a lesson in trade-offs. Because more than 95% of American households have fewer than five people, census officials figure it’s better to accommodate most of the people with the shortest form possible, even if a handful are inconvenienced.

If any of these innovations proves to be a really big bust, census officials note, they will learn that from April’s dress rehearsal and make the necessary changes in time for the real thing.

The question is whether it’s possible to ever get the form “right.” The America the Census Bureau is preparing again to count is prickly, temperamental, overworked, emotional, increasingly apathetic, short on time and not too crazy about the government.

“We know we are probably going to be sued for something,” Census Bureau Director Margaret Farnsworth Riche recently conceded.

This is the biggest federal operation short of going to war, the only single thing Washington does that sets out to touch every single soul in the United States.

So if there is one thing the Census Bureau can count on, it’s this: When you set out to design a census that makes 265 million people happy, you won’t.