Why the census matters
Rebecca Tippett, the founding director of Carolina Demography at the Carolina Population Center, shares why the census is critical to American life and how UNC-Chapel Hill has been helping North Carolina prepare for the process.
It’s been 10 years since the United States last conducted the census, and the U.S. Constitution mandates that it’s time to conduct it again.
The 2020 census is now available and can be completed online, by phone or by mail.
But what exactly is the census, and why is it essential for members of the Carolina community to participate?
Rebecca Tippett, founding director of Carolina Demography at the Carolina Population Center, said that the census is “potentially the most democratic and inclusive activity we do as a country,” because every individual in the United States participates and is counted.
As the census gets underway, Tippett shares why the census is critical to American life and how UNC-Chapel Hill has been helping North Carolina prepare for the process.
What is the census?
When we talk about “the census,” we’re talking about the decennial census, which is a once-in-a-decade count of all individuals living in the United States. What the Census Bureau is trying to do is count every individual living in the United States on April 1, 2020, once and only once, and in the right place, which is a massive undertaking.
What is the census used for?
The census is incredibly important for two big reasons. The first is political power because census counts are used to apportion the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to the states. It is also used for redistricting, both for congressional districts and at the state and local levels.
The census is also very critical for money. Census counts inform funding for more than 50 federal programs. North Carolina receives almost $24 billion annually in federal funding that comes from census-derived programs.
Census data underpins virtually every other statistical product that we have that helps us understand who we are and how we’re changing as a population. Census data, in some form, is used daily by economic developers, businesses and researchers to answer questions like where to put a new business, or mortality rate of a population, or how many people can be impacted by COVID-19. Those are all questions that are going to be informed in some way by census data.
Why is it important to get an accurate count?
The decennial census is potentially the most democratic and inclusive activity we do as a country. Everybody is counted. An accurate count is important so that states receive their fair share of federal dollars, as well as so that those dollars are allocated equitably across the state and its communities. Getting an accurate count ensures that communities in which people live get the funding that they need for things like roads or schools. It also ensures that those areas have appropriate representation when voting lines are drawn.
What is Carolina Demography, and how is it helping the state prepare for the census?
Carolina Demography is an applied demographic consulting service at the Carolina Population Center. We help individuals, organizations and leaders around North Carolina make sense of where the state is going in terms of population and demographics.
Our role is really education. Over the past year, we’ve been writing and presenting a lot about why the census is important and how the data is used. Last year, we worked with the North Carolina Counts Coalition to release a “hard-to-count” communities map that allowed individuals and community stakeholders to look at a map of North Carolina and census tracts in their county or at the statewide level, and look at reasons why people might be what’s called “hard-to-count,” meaning that they are less likely to respond to the census. We care about hard-to-count because when communities don’t respond, they’re less likely to have accurate data and they may not be counted at all. There are various reasons why communities are hard-to-count, and those reasons inform outreach strategies and potential messaging. We built a map where people could understand those factors and zoom in on a specific neighborhood and identify what factors were associated with being hard-to-count, so that they could target outreach efforts in that community.
