Participation Ensures Accurate Count
From Heritage Hunting column: February 27, 2000: Correction: The Federal Censuses are made available to the public every 72 years. An editor’s error gave the wrong time frame in a recent column.
Census 2000 will be upon us sometime in March. There has been much ballyhooing about this census, but knowing that our U.S. Constitution mandates a census every 10 years, everyone, especially family historians and genealogists, should support it with a cooperative attitude.
The first step preparing for Census 2000 was to collect addresses and correct housing maps used in 1990. That’s why many households received a survey questionnaire in early 1999. Some people not counted in the last census were missed because the Census Bureau did not know that their housing units existed.
All Americans should participate to ensure that Census 2000 is an accurate count to help decision makers understand what areas need new schools, roads, hospitals. … Census bureau data also determines how many federal dollars are needed to support such programs as employment services, housing assistance, highway construction, programs for the elderly.
Don’t worry about revealing personal information. Individual answers on the census forms are mixed as sand in a bucket of statistics, and your privacy is guaranteed by law.
Census 2000 asks several questions about race, which is key to implementing many federal programs. It’s critical for the basic research behind numerous policy decisions. Questions regarding race are not a new census subject. The Census Bureau has included race questions ever since the first census in 1790, when slaves were counted as a homeowner’s property.
Families will have the option to request census forms in 37 languages.
Every household is to receive the short form of the 2000 census. It includes questions about whether the place where they live is owned or rented, name, age, sex, relationship to household members, Hispanic origin, and race. The long-form questionnaire, which goes to an average of one in six households, has all the short-form questions, plus these additional questions: marital status, place of birth, citizenship or year of entry, education, ancestry, residency of five years ago (plotting migration), language spoken at home, veteran status and disability. Other questions on the long form have to do with employment and housing.
One discrepancy of great interest to family historians is that the “Marital Status” question on the short form has been dropped. And, as a sign of our times, a new question, “Grandparents as Caregivers,” has been added to the long form.
Most genealogists probably hope they receive the long form to answer, knowing how important census information is to family researchers. It will no doubt be our grandchildren, however, who will get to read it 70 years from now, when the 2000 census is made public. The 1930 census will be made public this year, but it probably will take two years before it’s widely distributed.
Data from Census 2000, however, will be made immediately available to the president. He will receive it, according to law, within nine months of Census Day (on or before Dec. 31, 2000). The first use of these counts are to reapportion the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Other statistics from the census will flow to Congress over the next two years.
What do Census Bureau employees do between censuses, you ask? According to its Web site, they conduct numerous other censuses and surveys for government, private entities and individuals, as well as tabulate the decennial data and publish tables and data. And you thought perhaps they went home to other jobs?
Visit the Web site at www.census.gov.