Spend a Few Minutes of Pi Day with the 2020 Census
The invitation letter to participate in 2020 census, downloaded from census.gov.
It’s Pi Day, 3/14, where the date equals the first three digits of the mathematical constant π. How did this statistician celebrate the day? By participating in the 2020 census, of course!
If you’re a U.S. resident, you recently received (or will receive by March 20) an invitation letter in the mail from the U.S. Census Bureau inviting you to fill out the census online. It looks like the letter reproduced here, and includes your individual Census ID for filling out the form online at my2020census.gov.
When you enter the ID online, you’re asked if you are filling out the form for your address, if you will be at that address on April 1, 2020, and whether you own or rent your residence. You are then asked for the name, age, race, and ethnicity (Hispanic or non-Hispanic) of each person at the address. If you want to see the full set of questions before starting, you can find a step-by-step guide, listing each question and the reason it is asked, on the Census Bureau’s website. After answering the questions, you are given a confirmation number. And that’s it! It took me less than 5 minutes, start to finish.
Why respond, and why do it online? The online option was introduced to reduce costs for conducting the census, but it’s especially important right now.
Participation in the census is required by law. If you don’t respond online, the Census Bureau will send you a form through the mail. And if you don’t respond to that, an enumerator will come to your residence. But each of these other options costs more — and a visit by an enumerator costs much, much more — than if you respond online. When you respond online, you free up resources that can be used to obtain a more accurate count nationwide.
Responding online is “green” (no paper). And it allows you to maintain the social distancing recommended during the COVID-19 epidemic.
The census is used for Congressional apportionment, as specified in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. It’s also used to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funds, including Medicaid, food and housing assistance, education programs, and highway funds. Census data form the backbone for other federal data collections. States also use information from the census to distribute resources to communities in the states. Tennessee, for example, uses data from the census to calculate the amount of state tax revenue that goes to individual counties, cities, and towns. A city that is undercounted in the census does not get as much funding as it would with an accurate count. Filling out your census form helps you, your community, your state, and the entire country.
Census data are especially crucial in the aftermath of emergencies and disasters. They allow relief workers to know which city blocks have high numbers of people in a vulnerable population (for example, the elderly) so that efforts can be targeted to help those with greatest needs. The data may be used for distribution of food aid. And during an epidemic, census data tell how many people live in a particular area, giving the denominators for estimated disease rates that identify which areas are hardest hit.
This is your only chance to be counted for the next ten years.
Remember, the official site is my2020census.gov. A website asking for your data that does not end in “census.gov” is a scam. The census does NOT ask for money or donations, financial account information, social security number, mother’s maiden name, citizenship status, or support for a political party. The official invitation letter from the Census Bureau is sent by the U.S. Postal Service, NOT through e-mail or as a link in social media. If you see anything that looks suspicious, please report it to the Trust and Safety Team of the Census Bureau.
Want to read more about the census? I highly recommend Margo Anderson’s book The American Census: A Social History. Anderson brings the statisticians and politicians behind developments in the census to life, with stories about Thomas Jefferson’s apportionment scheme, how census data were used during the Civil War and World War II, how the lack of reliable data worsened the Great Depression, the role of the census at the dawn of the computer age, and the controversies about what should be measured and how data should be collected that have existed since the first census in 1790. The American Census is an entertaining and informative read for Pi Day, or any other day — a history of the United States from the perspective of the statistics that have shaped, and been shaped by, the country.
Copyright (c) 2020 Sharon L. Lohr