We still have a few years until the 2030 census begins, but planning is well underway for how the decennial count of people in the U.S. will happen. Some consequential changes to how the census will work are being proposed, which could significantly change who is counted.
One major component of the census every decade is determining how much federal funding a state is eligible to receive. After the 2020 count, the Census Bureau’s 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey showed Arkansas had the largest undercount in the nation.
Rebecca Zimmermann is the community engagement director with Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She says census data helps guide the distribution of about $10 billion in federal funding to Arkansas each year.
“And that is for a wide range of programs impacting children and families in our state and other programs as well. So programs like the Children’s Health Insurance Program, school lunches, school breakfast, the Child Care and Development Block Grant that funds early childhood. We’re talking about programs around foster care and adoption, not to mention things that our kids need for their communities to do well, like they need safe roads for their parents to drive on to drop them off at school. They need health centers and clean drinking water and things like that. Census data is used to help distribute all of those funding sources.
“We did have the highest undercount in the country by quite a bit. And by one estimate, we would have had 5 billion more dollars over this decade if we had had an accurate count.”
Zimmermann lays out three proposed changes to the 2030 census that she says would be most harmful.
The first one would exclude noncitizens without green cards from the count. This would mean that many Marshallese Arkansans could be excluded. Historically, all immigrants have been counted in census data, regardless of status.
“That’s really important for a lot of different reasons. One reason is that the census directs that tax dollars be distributed to states based on population. And so regardless of whether or not you’re a U.S. citizen, you’re part of Arkansas, you’re living in our communities. You go to work every day. Your kids go to school. It’s important that our communities receive adequate funding that is reflective of the population needs that we have.
Another reason is that local governments use that data to help plan for how to serve their community.
“So how many fire trucks they have, how many emergency vehicles they have, how many lanes they need on highways.”
And nonprofit and advocacy organizations like AACF use census data to identify needs.
“If we don’t have that information, we don’t have a census that reflects our communities and also will really adversely impact the amount of dollars that we have in our ability to plan for our community’s future.”
The second proposed change would bar race, ethnicity and sexual orientation questions on the enumeration questionnaire. Zimmermann says losing that kind of data would make it harder to understand disparities between different demographic groups.
“If we don’t have that data, we can’t get a full picture of where there are gaps in services and programs that need to be addressed to make sure all children in our state thrive. But the government uses that data in different ways, including to enforce federal civil rights laws. And so it’s pretty alarming that this change would happen when we have hundreds of years of precedent of using race as a demographic question in the census.”
The third change would be to use tax records to establish a “usual residence,” meaning that a person’s residence should be consistent with and evidenced with their tax records. Zimmermann says this sort of change could impact just about anybody.
“It’s a very strange administrative change that they’re proposing, and we’re not fully sure how they plan on implementing it. And if someone’s address doesn’t match their tax returns, what is the consequence? Are they just not going to be counted at all? Or are you going to miscount them? Or are you just going to use administrative records instead of their census form to count them? It could get really messy.”
Zimmermann says there are several reasons why a person’s tax records may not match where they are actively living.
“There are people who don’t file their tax returns at their usual residence. They use a P.O. box. There are people who are divorced. They have split custody of their children, where their children are going to be counted. If by usual residence, typically they might be counted at one parent or another. And if it doesn’t reflect the tax records, are they going to be counted in the wrong place?
“You think of college students as a big issue in Northwest Arkansas. Young people who are in college should be counted at their dorm or their residence at that campus where they reside during the year. But if they’re on their parents’ tax returns as their dependent, are they going to be forced to be included on their parents’ tax returns as well? It’s just really messy and confusing. And yes, millions of people could be left out of the census.”
Moore: The more we started to talk about this, I really started to think about dependents and minors here that, like, people who typically do not file taxes.
“Or retired people. There’s just the list goes on and on of circumstances where on April 1 of the census, your usual residence is no longer when you file your tax returns the previous year.”
Zimmermann says she can feel sappy about the process of the census and the idea of accuracy being the most important part of its job.
“I did a lot of outreach work during the 2020 census, and I think it’s really kind of special that on April 1, every decade we have this moment where everyone is counted, everyone is recognized. We are all seen as residents of the United States of America, and we are all counted.
“And I think that, yes, the accuracy of the census needs to be the No. 1 thing that the Census Bureau considers. But it’s also a really special thing that this happens every decade.”
People can submit public comments about the 2030 U.S. census here until Nov. 2. For Ozarks at Large, I’m Matthew Moore.
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