Friday, March 2, 2007

Only 6 Questions on 2010 Census?

Well - not exactly.

An article by June Kronholz in the Wall Street Journal, and published in the San Diego Union-Tribune dated 2 March 2007 (I'm not sure the link will work), described the questions to be asked in the 2010 census on a one page form.

For each person in the household on 1 April 2010, the census will ask the head-of-household to write down the:

1) Name

2) Relationship to head of household (14 choices, but not foster Child because it would have been off the bottom of the page)

3) Gender (male or female, check one only)

4) Age, and date of birth (children less than 1 year old are to be listed as age 0)

5) Of Hispanic origin (yes or no, if yes, then check Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican or Other, and write in a nationality if Other)

6) Race (one or more of white, black, American Indian, choice of 6 Asian, choice of 3 Pacific Islanders, plus a write-in line for any other Asian nationality)

The head-of-household will be asked to answer three more questions, but only the one about home ownership/rental is defined now.

The article concludes that about 40 million households - one third of the total - will not send the survey back and will be visited by a census worker to help fill out the form.

In the 2000 census, about 3 million households were asked to answer a longer census form about home size, income, commute time, daily life, etc. This is now a yearly survey called the American Community Survey and is separate now from the census. Funny, I haven't heard of anyone having received one since 2000 - there should be a 1 in 6 chance that a person would have received one since 2000.

Oh - all of that will be released to the public in 2082. I can hardly wait! Ummm, maybe my grandchildren will be excited to see the marks I will make on the 2010 form.

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