Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau happily announced that they had ultimately reached a 72% return rate for Census 2010 forms via mail. That rate of response matched Census 2000's mail response rate, which marked the end of a several decade decline. The Bureau also announced that they'd started sending their more than 635,000 workers door-to-door to the 48 million households that did not respond to the form in the mail. That is a lot of labor to collect the information for those who refused to mail back their forms. The Census Project Blog has some thoughts on these occurrences. What do you think? Why do 28% of American households not return their forms?
Census Bureau Congratulates Itself, Starts Door-to-Door Tally
By Matt Rosenberg, About.com GuideMay 9, 2010
Explore Geography
Comments
It’s a combination of ignorance, laziness, and short sightedness that prevented those millions of families that didn’t send in their forms.
Apart from the above said resons of ignorance, laziness and short sightedness there may be other reasons too.Non receipt of forms may be one of the major reasons.For example many of us know about it now only.Yet another reason may be the residence status.
For some it is ingrained over generation a suspiscion of all things federal government.
The other day after sending my census form more than a month earlier I got a letter from the Census Bureau dated March 8, 2010 saying that in the next week I would be receiving my census form. Leave it to the government to Situation Normal All Fouled Up (SNAFU).
I have started work as a census taker. Many residents refuse to answer their door, even when I hold up my big “Census Bureau” sign. I hear music playing inside and see their driveways filled with cars, but they won’t answer, nor will ANY of them call back after I leave my notice. The residents who do come to the door, very often will claim that they mailed their questionnaire, but we didn’t get it. I tried to look up residents’ phone #s to call them, but my supervisor said not to, even though our manual says we should do this.
Good grief, I read the comments about the American census. Oh boy, I thought the American nation is civilised…