Local officials are concerned that some of Bartholomew County’s more economically unstable areas could see less federal funding over the next decade after self-response rates for the 2020 U.S. Census were lower than they were 10 years ago.
The U.S. Census is taken every 10 years to determine representation in Congress. It also determines how some $675 billion in federal money is allocated to states and local communities for education, Medicaid, food assistance, roads, playgrounds, after-school programs, low-income housing, among many other initiatives, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Indiana receives around $18 billion in federal funding each year based on population data from the U.S. Census Bureau — roughly $2,710 per person.
The amount of the funding that allocated to Bartholomew County depends on how many people respond to the census, local officials said.
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Overall, 72.9% of Bartholomew County households responded to the 2020 census online, phone or by mail, which was a 2.4% increase compared to 2010 and higher than the state rate of 70.3% and the national rate of 67%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The self-response rate inside the Columbus city limits was higher, with 74.6% of households responding, including 88% in the Parkside area around Rocky Ford Road and River Road.
However, the Lincoln-Central neighborhood area in Columbus had the lowest self-response rate in the county, with just 58.9% of households responding, which was 11.4% lower than the state response rate and 8.1% lower than the national rate.
These figures, however, don’t include the percentage of households that may have participated when census workers knocked on doors to follow up with people who hadn’t previously responded. The U.S. Census Bureau has not released that data, and local officials likely won’t know the final tally until mid-2021.
In 2010, the final response rate in Bartholomew County was 78%, which was 7.5% higher than the self-response rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Local officials expect to see “some increase” in the final tally, but the self-response rates were “not as good as good as we’d like,” said Robin Hilber, assistant director of community development for the city of Columbus and chair of the Columbus 2020 Census Complete Count Committee.
The end result in certain areas of the county, including the Lincoln Central Neighborhood area, could be some cuts in some federal resources that residents depend on.
“Homeless shelters, food banks, libraries, those are the kinds of things that are really going to be hurt by this,” Hilber said. “…They depend on the census.”
‘Hampered’ efforts
The COVID-19 pandemic dealt several setbacks to the once-a-decade head count, with virus lockdowns keeping census workers from going door to door and hindering efforts to increase public awareness.
Because of the pandemic, the Census Bureau pushed back finishing field operations for the 2020 census from the end of July to the end of October but then shortened it a month to the end of September, The Associated Press reported. A judge’s order returned the deadline to Oct. 31. But the Census Bureau moved it up to Oct. 5 before the Supreme Court suspended the judge’s order.
The pandemic also impacted local efforts to boost participation in the census, said Diane Doup, community outreach coordinator at the Lincoln Central Neighborhood Center.
The center had planned several events and other efforts aimed at reminding residents to participate in the once-a-decade head count and even fill out census questionnaires on the spot, Doup said.
But those events were canceled after COVID-19 started sweeping across the state and community.
“The pandemic severely hampered some of the plans that we had,” Doup said. “…When the pandemic hit and places had to really restrict visitors, and there were no large-scale events being allowed. That obviously hurt our efforts quite a bit.”
Instead, the efforts centered around word of mouth, social media, phone calls, among others. But some residents didn’t feel “comfortable giving out their information” despite local efforts to convince them otherwise, Doup said.
Census workers, however, are not allowed to guess how many people are residing in a given household, Hilber said.
“They can’t just guestimate,” Hilber said. “They can’t say, ‘Well, people didn’t respond there, but we’re going to say that probably two people live in that household and four live in this household.’ They don’t make any guestimates. It’s based on the statistics they were able to collect.”
Overall, Doup said the self-response rates this year were “unfortunate” and participation is “critical to the success of our community” but she is hopeful that local resources aren’t negatively impacted.
“We are concerned that when those numbers comes back, it could impact the resources our community receives,” Doup said. “We’re hopeful that it doesn’t, but we also know that we’re not unique, that there are other communities all over the country that battled the same issues that we did.”
Concerns about accuracy
The U.S. Census Bureau says that, overall, it reached more than 99.9% of the nation’s households, but in a nation of 330 million people, the remaining .1% represents hundreds of thousands of uncounted residents.
And in small cities, even handfuls of undercounted residents can make a big difference in the resources the communities receive and the power they wield.
Also, a high percentage of households reached does not necessarily translate to an accurate count, according to The Associated Press.
The data’s quality depends on how it was obtained. The most accurate information comes from people who “self-respond” to the census questionnaire online, by phone or mail. Census officials say 67% of the people counted in the 2020 census responded that way.
In any case, census takers, who go door to door, fell short of reaching all the households that hadn’t filled out the census form in many pockets of the country, according to the AP.
There are also concerns about the quality of the data obtained. The second-most accurate information after self-responses comes from household members being interviewed by census takers.
When census takers can’t reach someone at home, they turn to less-accurate information from neighbors, landlords and administrative records, the latter of which have been in widespread use for the first time this year.
Information was obtained by these methods for almost 40% of the census takers’ caseload, according to the Census Bureau.
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Visit 2020census.gov/ for more information about the 2020 U.S. Census.
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