Here’s what you need to know about Census 2020 and how community organizations are spreading awareness on the upcoming census.
By Alexis Kwan, Irene Romulo, Morgan Lee and Sarah Conway
HANA Center is a community center that is helping with census outreach, including computer classes like this one. (Photo: Max Herman)
Check your mail because you’re invited … to fill out the census!
Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau sets out to count every single person living in the United States. Starting in mid-March, the government is mailing out paper invitations with instructions on how to fill out census forms using one of three options: by phone, by mail or—for the first time ever—online.
Results of the 2020 Census will determine the number of seats each state gets in the House of Representatives (and number of Electoral College votes) and will affect how districts are redrawn in 2021. Plus, the data affects how $675 billion per year in federal funds will be spent on important public projects like roads and schools. Beyond that, demographic information in the census is used by businesses and other institutions to make decisions like whether to open a new grocery store or bank in your area
But it’s also a fraught year for the census. Will the online census form be a help or hindrance to counting everyone? With almost half of Chicago’s population (48 percent) identified as “hard to count,” how will that affect Chicago’s political representation and funds? Will anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric from the Trump administration deter people from participating?
City Bureau has put together a rundown with common questions about this year’s census. (To see more of our census coverage, click here.)
Census Basics
Who should fill out the census?
The census is meant to count every person living in the United States, regardless of age, nationality or citizenship status. A person should be counted where they usually live or sleep—that could mean on college campuses or at senior centers. Tourists or other short-term visitors are not counted.
For people who are experiencing homelessness, census workers spend three days (March 30 to April 1) counting people living outside, in shelters or at mobile locations.
What questions will the 2020 census ask?
Most of the questions are similar to what’s been asked in years past, according to an NPR analysis:
How many people are living or staying in a home on April 1, 2020.
Whether the home is owned with or without a mortgage, rented or occupied without rent.
A phone number for a person in the home.
The name, sex, age, date of birth and race of each person in the home.
Whether each person is of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin.
The relationship of each person to one main person in the home.
Note that this form is different from the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau sends each year to a small subset of American households and includes more questions.
I keep hearing about hard-to-count communities. What does that mean?
“Hard-to-count” is a phrase that the Census Bureau uses to describe people who are less likely to fill out the census, whether it’s because they are hard to reach or because the people themselves cannot or will not participate. The hard-to-count population in Chicago is around 1.3 million people, concentrated in communities including North Lawndale, Little Village, Austin, Humboldt Park, South Shore, Chicago Lawn and West Englewood.
There’s no one reason why people miss the census. For some, it is a lack of reliable internet access. For others, it’s a fear of misuse of data by the federal government compounded by the Trump administration’s highly publicized attempt to add a citizenship question, which ultimately failed. The city of Chicago worries that immigrants, refugees, renters, the homeless, people with disabilities, non-English speakers, children under five, senior citizens and college students, may be missed in the 2020 Census.
What’s at risk if people are not counted by the census in Chicago and Illinois?
The Urban Institute estimates that about 7 million people are at risk of being uncounted, which is roughly the population of Dallas. Communities that are undercounted may end up with less resources and political representation.
Illinois, which has around 12.5 million people, is spending $29 million on census outreach. The state has a lot to lose in the 2020 Census: Up to two Illinois congressional seats are on the chopping block and $1 billion of federal funding is on the line.
In Chicago, it’s estimated that each missed person costs the city $1,400 a year in federal funding. That’s why the city will spend $2.7 million on census outreach, or $2 for every hard-to-count resident. Chicago’s goal is a 75 percent response rate for the census compared to a 66 percent response rate 10 years ago, the worst among big cities in the U.S., according to Chicago Sun-Times reporting.
Census Outreach
What should I expect to see from the census?
The Census Bureau itself does a lot of outreach. You’ve probably seen census ads on social media or on billboards across the city already. After sending out the initial notification in the mail in March, from April through July, census workers will go door-to-door in areas that are “hard to count” or to households that have not filled out the survey. (If you don’t love the idea of a census worker knocking on your door, the Census Bureau says there’s a simple answer: Fill out the census form promptly when you receive it.)
Other outreach comes in the form of local community organizations that are known and trusted by people who are hard to count. These census funds, which are distributed from the government to the local groups, support things like community computer and internet access. They’ll also fund door knocking and neighborhood community forums to discuss what’s at stake with an undercount this year. Libraries will play a critical role in the 2020 census for 20 percent of U.S. residents who lack internet access.
Census outreach is underway, but did funding come too late?
Last summer, Governor J.B. Pritzker set aside $29 million in state funds for census outreach, while admitting that the state was behind in allocating those resources and blaming former Governor Bruce Rauner for it. But according to the Chicago Tribune, only a few of the nine major outreach groups in Chicago had received funds from the state as of January 28, 2020—which critics say is threatening the much-needed public outreach effort.
Some groups began sharing information and doing census outreach despite not receiving any or all of their state funding, according to the AP. Attendees at a February meeting on Cook County’s census marketing efforts said they are in the “11th hour” and they are worried not enough has been done to collaborate among groups to inform hard to count communities of the upcoming census, according to City Bureau Documenter Helena Duncan.
The delay is particularly important because of the trickle-down method of funding that the state employs. The state distributes grants to major regional groups, such as the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), which are then expected to share funds with smaller local community organizations. Of the $20 million awarded to community groups, ICIRR was given $3.7 million—the most funds of any group—and has already begun training and distributing funds to its 67 partner organizations who will do outreach and census assistance to communities in Chicago, suburban Cook County and some surrounding counties.
What if I see information about the census and I can’t tell if it’s true?
The rise of social media makes it easier to spread information—whether it’s true or not. Online disinformation campaigns affect everything from our national elections to health care to restaurants.
The Census Bureau hopes to limit the effects of false information in a few different ways. It set up a “Fighting Census Rumors” website where people can easily vet any rumors they’ve heard. It created a web redirect with Google and partnered with social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook to take down misinformation about the census. However, there hasn’t been significant false or misleading information on social media platforms, according to a January Quartz review confirmed by independent researchers. Experts believe it could be because big tech and the Census Bureau are doing a decent job at containing rumors and sharing correct information on the census.
Census Barriers
What are the major barriers that the census faces in 2020?
Two major themes emerge here: Lack of trust in the government, and the challenge of internet-based surveys. In some ways, they are related.
While there are always people who are reluctant to share data with the government, the Trump administration’s failed push for a citizenship question and the increased reliance of local and state data to support federal immigration enforcement policies have stoked fears among communities that are already considered difficult to count by the Census Bureau. According to Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a lack of trust in the confidentiality of census data presents a major barrier to census participation in the U.S. for communities of color and immigrants.
There’s also the fact that 2020 is the first time people can participate in the census online. Experts fear this technology could bring new risks to data security while making it even harder for hard-to-count populations to participate. In February, a government watchdog released a report that “highlighted numerous cybersecurity and technical challenges that could compromise the ‘cost, quality, schedule and security of the count,’ especially with the new technology introduced this year,” according to the Guardian US.
What’s so bad about allowing people to take the census online?
The Census Bureau aims to have 80 percent of households to complete the 2020 survey over the internet, which it says will make the census more accessible (and less expensive).
But this could also decrease turnout, especially among hard-to-count communities. Some 35 percent of U.S. adults do not have internet access at home, including 53 percent of Latinx and 43 percent of Black adults, according to a study by The New School’s Digital Equity Laboratory.
There’s also a matter of data security and reliability. To prepare for the influx of web traffic, the Cnsus Bureau recently decided to shelve its online software in favor of an in-house alternative. The decision came after the Government Accountability Office sounded alarms that connection issues prevented some 600,000 from accessing the census website at once. The GAO also pointed out that the untested backup system, called Primus, encountered issues too.
Why are people worried about sharing their data with the federal government?
Like any large institution, the federal government already collects a large amount of data on people living in the U.S. The census is when this process is most visible.
By law, the U.S. Census Bureau is required to keep your information confidential and anonymous. Though the data is used to create statistics about your larger community, city or state, the Census Bureau cannot share individualized information with anyone, including law enforcement or groups that handle government benefits. (More on this below.)
Has census information ever been used to target people living in the U.S.?
In 1942, Congress passed the Second War Powers Act, which repealed protections that had once prohibited the Census Bureau from revealing the personal information of individuals and allowed the FBI to use information to round up Japanese Americans and send them to internment camps.
Lawmakers restored the census data confidentiality in 1947 with the 72-Year Rule, which bars the release of “personally identifiable information about an individual to any other individual or agency until 72 years after it was collected for the decennial census” in 1952.
Even without sharing individualized data, the Census Bureau came under fire when the Department of Homeland Security used ZIP code-level data to identify Arab-American communities in the United States after September 11. The Census Bureau claimed that this type of information was already publicly available. However, Arab-American advocacy organizations said it was a “dangerous breach of public trust” reminiscent of Japanese internment.
How safe are these data protections?
Previously the government has ruled that laws such as the Patriot Act could not compel the Census Bureau to release any individualized information.
However in 2018, an internal Justice Department email showed at least one government official hedging on this ruling, declining to answer whether any law could compel the release of census data, in case these data protections “come up for renewed debate,” according to NPR reporting. The official no longer works at the Justice Department, and the agency declined to comment to NPR on the email or the previous government ruling.
Critics of the Trump administration say this kind of debate is meant to deter immigrants and other communities of color from participating in the census, even if it never comes to fruition. “Many civil rights groups and immigrant advocates... fear that the email's revelations could further discourage households with unauthorized immigrants and other noncitizens,” NPR reported.
How is my census data protected right now?
Today, employees of the Census Bureau are barred for life if they share anyone's personal information with any individual or group, including other government agencies. They can spend up to five years in prison or be fined up to $250,000. The law also prohibits any federal, state, or local agency from using information collected against the individuals who respond to the census.
You can take the 2020 Census today online today.
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