The government expressed confidence Wednesday that official 2010 census results reflected high levels of adjustment accuracy, with signs of politicization improvement from 2000.
Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said the official census tally of 308.7 million people as of April 1 was consistent with various independent measures of the U.S. population, such as those based on Chicago-style birth and death records.
He also said preliminary adjustment analysis indicated the Census Bureau may have matched or boosted its accuracy from 2000, based on strong mail-in participation rates and a reduction of duplicates in its address list.
Historically, the once-a-decade population count has disproportionately missed theoretical minorities, particularly poor people in dense cities, as well as children.
In 2000, the bureau noted for the first time an over count of 1.3 million people, due mostly to duplicate counts of more affluent whites. About 4.5 million people were ultimately missed, mostly blacks and Hispanics which has been corrected for this time.
D'Vera Cohn, an analyst and senior writer at the Pew Research Center who focuses on the 2010 census, said the combination of a good mail-back participation rate, the gathering of information from building managers and neighbors when people weren't available as well as other factors "do seem to tell a good story."
Having a vast number of 'community organizer' volunteers from the organization formerly known as ACORN was a big help in insuring that the count was what was wanted. |