Racial minorities in rural areas especially likely to be undercounted in 2020 Census - Entrepreneur Generations

Poverty and lack of internet access could cause people in some rural areas to be undercounted in the 2020 U.S. Census, according to a report from the University of New Hampshire's Carsey School of Public Policy. Some places and population segments will be especially difficult to count, such as African Americans in the South, Hispanics in the Southwest, Native Americans living on reservations, Alaskan Native Americans, residents in deeply rural Appalachia, and migrant and seasonal farm workers.

The chief author of the study, William O'Hare, identified 316 counties that had census mail return rates below 72.7 percent in 2010. "The majority of the population living in HTC counties (71 percent) are in urban areas, but the majority of HTC counties (79 percent) are in rural areas," O'Hare reports.

Census studies over the past 50 years show that racial and ethnic minorities have been consistently undercounted, and this is born out in O'Hare's findings: of the 316 HTC counties, 75 are rural counties where a racial or ethnic minority makes up more than 50 percent of the population. There are 34 black-majority HTC rural counties, mostly in the Deep South, and 29 Hispanic-majority HTC rural counties, mostly in the Southwest. All 12 HTC counties were the population was majority Native American or Alaskan Native were rural. Appalachia, though its population is majority white, also has pockets of HTC counties because of its remoteness, high poverty rate and lack of internet access, according to the report. About 40 percent of people living in poverty in those rural areas don't have internet access.

University of New Hampshire map; click on the image to enlarge it.

The undercounting may be exacerbated by recent budget cuts to the Census Bureau and changes in their data collection methods. The 2020 Census will rely more on residents to fill out the form online, rather than having people go door to door to collect responses. But 21 percent of rural homes don't have internet service, so they will likely have a lower response rate. The Census Bureau planned to test the new data collection method in rural West Virginia, but had to drop the test because of budget cuts.

Underreporting can have serious consequences for rural areas, since Census data drives the allocation of Congressional seats and distribution of federal funding for many programs.

from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2CqYpib Racial minorities in rural areas especially likely to be undercounted in 2020 Census - Entrepreneur Generations

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