Get Back To The Basics On The Census

by Richard B. Beal, Jr.

San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 1990; The Washington Post, July 22, 1990, and The Dallas News, Aug 26, 1990.

I was an enumerator for the Census Bureau. It was an

enlightening experience and caused me to reflect a bit about the

census and how it might be done better.

There is a simple reason for taking the census. The

Constitution directs that it be done every ten years and that its

count be used to apportion members of the House of

Representatives from each state.

This seems fairly easy--just count the people and that tells

us how many representatives in Congress each state gets. If

that's all there is to it, what's all this other stuff on the

census form asking about the number of acres your house sits on,

how many rooms you have, whether you run a barber shop in your

house and what do you think your house is worth? Are you white

or black? If neither, then which Indian tribe or which Hispanic

or Asian country are you from? All this on the "short" form,

which, mercifully, most people get.

The best one can say for the long form is that it is well

named. Expanding on the short it asks: How much do you pay for

utilities, taxes, interest, mortgages or rent? When did you move

into your house or apartment and when was it built? Where were

you born? Where have you lived? What is your level of

education? What is your ethnic origin? What is your income in

detail?

The Census Bureau gives two reasons why these intrusive

questions are asked: To enable the government to equably distribute

funds for education, housing and health programs, and to provide an

economic profile of our changing nation. In other words, to benefit

government and business. Both, most people would agree, need

data to make the decisions that are expected of them. Does that

justify the intrusive questions? Not really. And, intrusive

questions don't elicit reliable data.

Take, for example, income data. A bartender who works in

one of the posh restaurants of Washington, D.C. when asked his

income for 1989 flashed a look of guilt and mumbled $5,500.

I dutifully wrote that figure down, using the hood of his Porsche

as a table. Quite naturally people resent the income questions and

don't answer them very well. As many said, "I've already

answered that question for the government." Yes, yes, we all

understand that the Internal Revenue Service and the Census

Bureau are different government agencies, and their data are

supposed to be kept separate, but in our heart of hearts the

government is the government. The notion that its many bureaus

and departments will never talk to each other simply doesn't hold

water, especially when we know that the data will be

computerized.

But why shouldn't government agencies talk to each other? A

much better way to gather income data for the census would be to

direct the IRS to produce for the Census Bureau sterilized (i.e.,

no names or addresses) income data by state, city, zip code,

whatever. Much easier and, significantly, the data would be

accurate.

The 1990 census return seems obsessed with race. Almost

half the column on the short form for each person in the

household is taken up with race questions.

It is troublesome to realize how capricious and inaccurate

many of the answers about race are, mainly because the answers

are not as simple to arrive at as one would first believe. Also,

there are no firm guidelines for answering racial questions. For

example, children of a white American father and a Japanese—born

mother--white or Asian?

I talked to two white women from the Mid—West. Both had

blond, blue—eyed children. Both were married to Hispanic men

with distinctive Spanish surnames, one from Cuba and one from

Venezuela. The woman married to the Cuban concluded that I

should record her children as Hispanic "because with the name

they have they get treated like Hispanics anyway. I did. The

second woman, after some thought, concluded that since the Jews

hold that the line follows the mother's (logically, she felt)

that her children should be listed as non—Hispanic» I did.

Which of these women was right? I haven't the foggiest

notion, and the truth of the matter is neither does anyone else.

We would do much better to contract with private firms to collect

and present this kind of data in a consistent and coherent form«

Taking the census in the future need not be the expensive,

unresponsive and controversial experience that the 1990 census

has been. There is a simple solution: Do what the Constitution

says--count the people and apportion representatives accordingly.

If we really need all this other information, then direct those

peripheral and irksome questions to the professionals, public and

private, who get paid to answer such questions.

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