Author: Claire Larson
As a precursor for the 2010 Census, the U.S. Census Bureau is traveling to the Occidental campus as they go across America over the next few months to educate the public about the importance of participating in the government- sponsored poll. Occidental students will be included in the nationwide survey effort. Representatives from the Census Bureau will make stops on campus starting this March once the counting process is underway.
The decennial census is hinged upon responses by U.S. residents to a survey containing ten questions concerning number of residences per household, age, gender and race. The questionnaire will be delivered in March to all residences in the U.S. and its territories, and officials say that responses received carry significant political importance.
In a Jan. 15 e-mail, Assistant Director of Living and Learning Communities Maureen Regan notified students of their possible inclusion in the census. “[The census will survey] all residence buildings here. We provide the agents with the number of students in a hall and they will take a random sampling of the demographic,” Regan said in a later interview.
According to its Web site, the Bureau is kicking off the 2010 information collection with the Census Road Tour. In this tour, vehicles will travel around the U.S. hosting events intended to spread enthusiasm for the census and help communities understand some of its political implications. The Road Tour will send 13 vehicles to communities nationwide from January to April.
The Los Angeles regional Road Tour vehicle, nicknamed “Confidential” – alluding to concerns that L.A.’s illegal immigrant population may have in participating in the census -recently made stops at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. According to a Partnership Specialist for Pasadena, Meredeth Maxwell, the National Road Tour vehicle will be making stops in the Los Angeles area on Feb. 11 and March 4.”There are two major functions of the census,” said Politics professor Peter Dreier. “First is the allocation of federal funds. [Second] is Congressional allocation in the House of Representatives.”
Dreier emphasized the importance of the census to money allocation because municipalities not only rely on federal funding for highways and parks, but also for anti-poverty and welfare funds. “The federal government depends on the census to know how many poor and elderly there are, but also where they live,” he said.
Census officials are focusing on the gathering of data in big cities like Los Angeles this year due to criticism that the census often miscounts these populations. According to Dreier, The poor tend to be difficult to count because many of them lack telephones or permanent residences, eliciting the label “invisible poor.” “It’s the biggest cities, like L.A., that have the most […people gone uncounted], and the amount of federal funding L.A. gets compared to other cities depends on the number eligible [for said funding],” Dreier said. Los Angeles’ impoverished inhabitants are not allocated the necessary funding because of this undercount.
Census demographers have come up with ways to estimate undercounts among the homeless, but Democrats and Republicans argue about whether to count them. A major point in the count debate is whether or not to include illegal immigrants who make up a major factor of the populations of places like Los Angeles. “They absolutely should be counted,” Dreier said. “The census counts all people, not just citizens, and the immigrants’ kids are entitled to go to school – they need allocated Title I money.”The Census Bureau is trying to raise awareness among these hard-to-count populations like immigrants and the poor to encourage their participation.
A copy of the 2010 questionnaire can be found on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Web site, www.census.gov.
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