WASHINGTON — Two and a half years after the 2020 census stopped counting heads, the Census Bureau has yet to say how many children under the age of 5 live in Albuquerque or how many women live in Sioux City. And it will stay that way for another year.
The bureau said this week it could not release those statistics and many others until May 2023, and that much of the more detailed data combining answers to multiple questions would have to wait until at least August 2023. The cause, it said, is a series of delays that began with the advent of Covid-19 and continue with struggling efforts to keep information about individual respondents private, as required by federal law.
It’s the longest lag of census data in memory — up to two years after a normal release date — and it’s causing dismay among some who rely on those numbers to plan for the future.
“It’s so laggy that people aren’t going to see it as very useful,” said Kurt R. Metzger, a demographic consultant and founder of Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit data source for the region. “I don’t blame the Census Bureau. I’m just really disappointed.”
Not all are so gloomy. “Do we want it to be faster, more up-to-date and more responsive? Absolutely,” said Jonathan Weinhagen, president of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce, whose business members rely on census data. “But does it have any value? One hundred percent.”
What you should know about redistribution
The Census Bureau met its constitutional obligation to provide population data for the August 2021 reorganization of the House of Representatives, about four months behind schedule. This publication included statistics on race and ethnicity, the proportion of residents over the age of 18, and the number of people living in group accommodation such as dormitories and prisons.
Normally, however, after the completion of this work, the bureau gradually released data on the answers to other census questions. It still lacks a detailed breakdown of the nation by age and gender, along with statistics on the type of dwelling, people per dwelling (and whether they were family members or outsiders such as retirees), and whether that dwelling was owned, rented, or rent-free.
The census also counted same-sex relationships, adopted children, and cohabiting extended family members.
None of this data has been published. Also, no crosstabulations were made to create, for example, data on same-sex households with children, single-parent homeowners, the number and ages of people in Latino households, and so on. Many of these dates will be further delayed until August 2023 and beyond.
“We’re a rapidly changing state that’s growing rapidly, and there are many things that need to be impacted quickly by meaningful data,” said Tony Carvajal, executive vice president of the nonprofit research organization Florida TaxWatch.
The nonprofit organization Tallahassee produces reports in which it advises state officials on budgetary issues like public support, housing and education — with details like family size, gender and age being critical to decisions like school spending.
“It can all be washed out,” he said. “But when a thousand people move to Florida every day, you can’t miss the resources for educational tools or family planning.”
Much, if hardly all, of the delay can be attributed to the pandemic that hit in 2020, just as the Census Bureau began its ten-year staff count. The nationwide shutdown added several months to the count.
This is how redistribution works in the USA
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What is a redistribution? It’s redefining the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts. It takes place every 10 years after the census to reflect changes in the population.
How does it work? The census determines how many seats in Congress each state gets. Cartographers then work to ensure that a state’s districts all have approximately the same number of residents to ensure equal representation in the House of Representatives.
Who draws the new cards? Each state has its own procedure. Eleven states outsource the mapping to an external body. But most — 39 states — let state legislators draw the new maps for Congress.
If state legislators can charter their own districts, won’t they be biased? Yes. Partisan mapmakers often shift county boundaries — subtly or egregiously — to group voters in a way that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.
Is Gerrymandering Legal? Yes and no. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact portions of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic manipulation.
Early on, the agency opted to process basic population data separately, rather than with housing data as is usual. The aim was to make these figures quickly available to calculate the reallocation of seats in the House of Representatives and to draw new political boundaries in the States.
This worked, but at a cost. The agency had also opted to build new privacy safeguards into the 2020 census data to prevent outsiders from reverse-engineering census statistics in a way that could identify specific households.
The solution of adding digital “noise” to the data via computer algorithms was originally intended to be applied to a combined population and housing data file. However, because these files were processed separately, it became—extremely difficult in some cases—to combine data from the two files into a single file that is accurate while still protecting privacy.
These efforts, which involve lengthy consultations with groups of data users such as businesses and governments, have extended the timeframe for the release of statistics well beyond initial estimates. Bureau officials had previously said they hoped to make detailed housing data available this fall.
While officials have now scheduled data releases for May and August 2023, they have not said when the last statistic will be released.
Data users can rely on another source of numbers: the American Community Survey, the bureau’s ongoing annual survey of millions of people, which asks more questions than the census. And while it doesn’t cover the entire population, it does track demographic trends like age and racial changes — and for now, Mr. Weinhagen of the Minneapolis chamber said, that should do the trick.
Anyway, he said, why would the census be any different than the rest of American society?
“Everything is delayed,” he said. “The census is delayed. Supply chains are delayed. Good luck getting a couch.”