Updated: 2020 Census response rates
Bottom Line: And... that’s a wrap. On Tuesday the United States Supreme Court ended the 2020 Census surveying, which had extended beyond September (the end of the federal government’s fiscal year) due to the pandemic. All throughout this year you’ve had mailers sent to you. Ads on radio and TV targeting you and after a pandemic pause in door to door solicitation, Census workers had been out in force in our neighborhoods. Based on the news reporting on this topic you’d likely be led to think the response rate was low, and there would be dire consequences to your community if response rates weren’t higher. As always there remain two sides to stories and one side to facts. And yet again, the notion that Census response rates are especially low due to the pandemic, isn’t a fact. Here’s the final Census response rate from 2010’s Census:
2010:
- US: 66.5%
- Florida: 63%
- And for this year’s...
2020:
- US: 66.8%
- Florida: 63.7%
Pandemic? What pandemic? If you looked at 2020’s response rates you wouldn’t know that there was a disruption in data aggregation. That’s because 2020 produced higher response rates for both Florida and the country as a whole compared to ten years ago. This also illustrates why it’s sensible for the Supreme Courtto have ended the process of data aggregation which had already entered overtime.