The push is on to get people to fill out their 2020 census forms, particularly among groups that have traditionally been missed in previous censuses, such as African Americans, renters and people who live in poverty.
But one of the groups most undercounted in the 2010 census will remain oblivious to the efforts to make sure they’re included this time: children under the age of 5.
An estimated 4.6 percent of children from newborns through age 4 — about 1 million nationwide — were not counted in the last census, the highest percentage of any age group, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It’s not their fault, of course; young children rely on adults in their household to fill out the forms and to include them.
Some of the undercount can be explained by the fact that young children disproportionately belong to demographic groups that are difficult to reach. Latinos, for example, make up less than 10 percent of North Carolina’s population but they now account for about 18 percent of the state’s children under the age of 5, says Whitney Tucker, research director for NC Child, an advocacy group.
“We’re seeing that our state is increasingly full of black and brown children who we know from previous census results we don’t have a very good history of being able to count well,” Tucker said during a conference call on children and the census last month.
It’s not just that entire households of black and Hispanic residents are undercounted. Researchers looking into the undercount have determined that young children were being left out even when their parents and older siblings were listed on the forms.
“Most of the children missed in 2010 lived in a household that returned the census form,” Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, said at a conference in Research Triangle Park last month. “So there was an adult filling out a form that made the decision, ‘I am not going to put Judy or Juanito on this form.’ ”
The census is required by the U.S. Constitution to determine how seats in Congress are divided among the states. Because of its growing population, North Carolina is expected to pick up a 14th seat in the House of Representatives as a result of the 2020 census, at the expense of a slower-growing state like Michigan or New York. Tucker said if the estimated 25,000 young children missed by the 2010 census in North Carolina had been counted, the state would likely already have that 14th seat.
Census numbers are also used to help determine where the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars for health care, education, transportation and housing. That’s why advocacy groups and state and local governments have created campaigns to try to ensure everyone is counted in their areas.
“There is a great deal at stake,” says Machelle Sanders, the state Secretary of Administration and head of the N.C. Complete Count Commission. “We cannot afford an undercount of the state’s residents.”
Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau attempts to count everyone living in the United States and its territories on April 1. Thursday the bureau will begin sending out cards to every household in the country, inviting them to fill out a census form online, by phone or by mail.
A household includes everyone who occupies a house, apartment, mobile home or room as their usual place of residence on April 1, whether they’re related to each other or not. A child living with her grandparents would be included in the household; a daughter away at college would not.
While the 10-year census is the country’s most comprehensive effort to count everyone, there are always flaws. Using birth certificates, surveys and other public records the Census Bureau and other researchers can estimate what kinds of people were more likely to be miscounted.
Researchers have found that some groups are actually over-represented in the census, including non-Hispanic whites and homeowners. Among the people who may be tallied twice are owners of weekend or vacation homes who fill out two forms, or children at college who are counted in their dorms and also erroneously listed by their parents at home.
The census misses adults, too. But the undercount of adults has declined over the decades, even as the number of young children missed has actually grown, according to demographer William P. O’Hare, former director of the KIDS COUNT project at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and author of a book on census undercounts. An estimated 1.5 percent of both adults and young children were left out of the 1980 census, O’Hare says, but since then the net undercount for young children has tripled, while adults as a whole now tend to be overcounted.
There’s no single reason why people don’t include young children on census forms, O’Hare and others say. After 2010, the Census Bureau determined that one explanation is that they increasingly live in “complex households,” headed by grandparents, foster parents or others who may not think to include a non-biological child on their census form, said D’Vera Cohn, who specializes in the census for the Pew Research Center.
“There’s more people there than just mom and dad,” Cohn said.
Another possible explanation is that immigrants or young parents filling out the census form for the first time might not think to include their children. It seems to be a particular problem among Hispanics, says Armando Cruz-Martinez, regional census campaign manager for the NALEO Educational Fund.
“For whatever reason, the Latino community seems to think that their children don’t need to be counted, especially children between the ages of zero and 4,” Cruz-Martinez said at a press conference at the Mexican consulate in Raleigh last month.
“We did some research around why that was, and we came to the conclusion there wasn’t a particular reason,” Cruz-Martinez said. “Sometimes the parents think the government has no interest in their children’s information. Sometimes they just don’t want to put down their kids’ information.”
State and local groups and complete count committees have crafted messages for hard-to-count populations, including parents and caregivers of young children.
