Let the Great Head Count Begin

Congressional power and billions in funds are at stake in the 1980 census

Answer the census! We're counting on you!

That slogan will start bombarding Americans this week from sea to shining sea as the great decennial head count begins. Ministers, priests and rabbis will be preaching it from their pulpits on "Census Sabbath" and "Census Sunday." Put to music, the slogan will blare from radios in Spanish, Cantonese, Russian, Greek, Vietnamese and 26 other languages in addition to English. On TV, the census will be plugged by Kirk Douglas, Jose Ferrer, Elvin Hayes, Roger Staubach, Mickey Mouse and a cast of thousands. Just in case someone might manage to remain blissfully ignorant of the effort to get every American head counted, census messages will accompany tens of millions of Social Security checks and telephone and utility bills. They will be distributed on flyers by thousands of Boy Scouts; they will appear magically on restaurant place mats, street posters and lapel buttons.

If the campaign is extraordinary, so is the importance of the final tabulations made by the U.S. Census Bureau. When the results are sent to the President at the start of next year, as the law requires, the shifts in population will determine which states gain and lose seats in the House of Representatives, and they could affect the redistricting of state legislatures and even county and city councils. The census findings are the basis for allocating more than $50 billion in federal funds to states and localities. They provide source material for business and industry about the changing composition and needs of the national marketplace. With so much at stake, small wonder that the 1980 census is already the most closely scrutinized--and harshly criticized--of any since the national head count began in 1790.

This decade's census is one of the biggest, costliest and most ambitious statistical exercises in history. Using 120 million forms, 5,000 tons of paper and 85 tons of ink, the survey will amass and tabulate more than 3 billion answers and record them on 5,000 miles of microfilm. To process this avalanche of data, the Census Bureau has had to design (and patent) special scanning equipment that will be plugged into a giant UNIVAC 1100 computer around the clock for months. Meanwhile, an army of 250,000 census takers, or "enumerators," and 15,000 office workers are being recruited; they will earn $4 to $5 an hour and work from four to eight weeks. The cost of the entire exercise: more than $1 billion, compared with $221.6 million in 1970 and an estimated $44,000 in 1790.

This week the nation's 86 million households will receive by mail the blue, white and gray census form; 90% will be instructed to send back the questionnaire, using the provided postage-paid envelope, on April 1, which has been designated Census Day. Households failing to comply within several weeks will receive visits from the enumerators. They will also call on the 10% of the households that are not required to mail back the forms. This group is located mainly in sparsely populated areas. (Past censuses have shown that mail often goes astray in these regions.)

Two forms are being used in the survey. Some 83% of the nation's households will get the short version, which asks seven personal questions, such as each resident's name, sex, age, marital status, race (15 categories, including white, black, American Indian, Filipino, Eskimo and Guamanian) and whether the respondent is of Spanish/Hispanic origin. Specific queries about race and national descent have been sought by minority group leaders who have argued that many of their members have been overlooked in past counts. Said Juanita Steadham, a prominent Creek Indian activist: "Before, the form said 'black and others.' Indians would not mark 'others.' "

Breaking with custom, this year's form does not pose questions to the "Head of Household." Women's libbers won their argument that such a term implies an inequality between husband and wife. Questions, therefore, will now be asked of the resident "in whose name the home is owned or rented."

In addition to personal data, the short form also asks a dozen questions mostly about the residence: the number of rooms, whether it is owned or rented and whether it has a private entrance and full plumbing (defined as "hot and cold piped water, a flush toilet and a bathtub or shower"). The long form, which will be received by 17% of the households, asks 46 additional questions, including education and income levels and whether the respondent is physically or mentally disabled. These questions seem to be not only intrusive but also idiosyncratic, and they and similar ones have irritated or angered millions of Americans over the years.

In its defense, the Census Bureau notes that most of these questions are to meet the requirements of legislation passed by Congress. Data on bathrooms are needed, says a bureau publication, "in federal studies of water and sewage use. They are also utilized as an indication of housing quality."

The long form also wants to know if a foreign-born resident speaks English "very well, well, not well [or] not at all." Answers to this will provide information required by the Voting Rights Act. Future energy programs could profit from the answers concerning how a residence is heated (by steam, warm-air furnace, fireplaces, etc.), the fuel used, whether there is air conditioning and if respondents get to work by car, bus, subway, bicycle, on foot or other means.

The questions being asked this year have survived a long shakedown process that began in 1974 when the bureau started collecting suggested queries from governmental departments, local officials, Chambers of Commerce and interest groups. Most recommendations were turned down because, according to the bureau, they did not "justify burdening the American public across the board." The housing industry, for example, wanted to know about the size of cracks in household ceilings; this was rejected because respondents objected strongly to it during tests of sample questionnaires.

The man responsible for sending out the final questionnaires is Census Bureau Director Vincent Barabba. Now on leave from his job as director of market research at Xerox Corp., he had headed the bureau from 1973 to 1976 under the Nixon and Ford Administrations, and was brought back by Carter last June. One major problem he faces is hiring enough enumerators. Though they all are supposed to report to local offices on April 18 for three days of training, last week the bureau was still about 15% short of its recruiting goal.

A number of factors seem to be impeding recruiting. The bureau has set higher standards than usual by seeking thousands of bilingual enumerators. Many married women who used to be anxious to make a few extra dollars by working in the census are no longer available; they now have full-or part-time jobs.

Once the actual survey begins, the most controversial census issue is sure to be accuracy, just as it has been since George Washington's day (see box). In 1970, according to postcensus samplings, an estimated 2.5% of the population was missed. While this would be a tolerable margin of error if it affected all segments of the nation equally, the so-called undercount rate for blacks was 7.7%, while for whites it was only 1.9%.

In the past, some census takers have hesitated to venture deep into the crowded, big-city neighborhoods in which a significant portion of the minority population lives. According to Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's black mayor, his city has been "cheated out of $11.7 million in federal aid and almost 6,000 jobs" because of the 1970 undercount. Congressional experts estimate that each person overlooked by the census could cost a state as much as $200 in funds from Washington.

Another challenge will be to count the illegal aliens. Says Barabba: "This is the real nut, probably the most difficult problem we face." Under Article I of the Constitution, the tally must include the "whole number" of persons in each state; the bureau has interpreted this provision to include the illegals.

Because they fear discovery and deportation, illegal aliens are understandably reluctant to cooperate with any Government program. Because so little is known about them, estimates of their population range from 3 million to 12 million. Although the census does not ask if the respondent is in the country legally, the long form does require foreign-born persons to state when they entered the U.S. From such information, the Immigration and Naturalization Service probably could uncover great numbers of the illegals. To overcome the illegals' fear of the census, the bureau insists that no one but sworn census workers will have access to the individual records for 72 years. Bureau officials proudly cite their refusal during World War II to allow the War Department to have the names and addresses of Japanese Americans who had registered in the 1940 census.

Because an accurate count could lead to increased federal aid, minority leaders generally have been enthusiastically backing the census effort. Creek Indian Leader Steadham has been traveling for the Census Bureau through Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee to meet with groups of Indians and explain how the forms must be filled out. Coleman Young, Detroit's black mayor, is appearing in TV ads in that city to reassure his fellow citizens that they have nothing to fear from the survey.

Perhaps the greatest effort to get an accurate count has been organized by Hispanic community leaders. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has opened nine offices in Texas, California and Illinois to promote the survey. The New York-based Spanish International Network, which has 41 affiliate Spanish-language stations, is scheduling a 90-minute entertainment extravaganza. As part of the show, Hispanic celebrities will explain each question on the form and fill out a sample answer.

But minority leaders and big-city mayors fear that this will not be enough to avoid a sizable undercount. They complain that the Census Bureau, which has been consulting them, has not followed enough of their advice.

The minority leaders' key demand is that the bureau pledge in advance to adjust its official tally if a planned postcensus sampling reveals an undercount. Barabba balks at making such a promise maintaining that "it is still an open question." One problem is that a detailed adjustment could not be ready by the Jan. 1, 1981, deadline for turning over the tally to the President. Another problem is that totals based partly on a sample could raise legal questions about whether they could be used to reapportion seats for the House of Representatives. But Barabba does not rule out the possibility that some formula for adjustment eventually could be used for allocation of federal funds.

The 1980 census poses other problems. A report by the National Academy of Sciences notes an increase in "married women working outside the home and not so available as before to provide information to the census taker." Worries Deputy Census Director Daniel Levine-"I'm well aware of the fact that we have had Watergate, Koreagate and CIA scandals and that surveys taken outside the Census Bureau suggest that people have less and less trust in their Government."

One group is almost certain to answer questions about their incomes less than candidly: those citizens who do not report their full earnings to the tax collector. The blossoming of America's underground economy means that a lot of income is not going to be accounted for. Admits Levine: "All this does affect the quality of the census. There's no doubt about it." Those who lie or refuse to complete the form could be fined $100.

This year even transients and drifters are going to be tracked down. As in previous counts, census forms will be distributed to hotels, rooming houses and campgrounds; enumerators will visit missions, flophouses, all-night cinemas and tram and bus stations. For the first time census takers, often working in pairs for safety, will drop by pool halls, food-stamp centers, employment offices. They will approach vagrants on street corners and ask whether they have already been counted.

Ironically, sampling techniques are so sophisticated that the census is likely to turn up few surprises. The count is expected to show that 221.7 million people live in the U.S.--an increase of 18.5 million over 1970. Because of population shifts, the South and West will gain 14 congressional seats at the expense of the Northeastern and North Central states. The accuracy of these samplings raises another question: Why should the nation bear the expense and bother of a decennial head count at all? Experts generally agree on the need for the census. Says Ben Wattenberg, of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank: "At some point in this whole statistical system, somebody has got to do a count. Nothing else works unless you have a base number that you can actually, physically verify." The long and arduous effort to obtain this base number begins this week.

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