The Census Might Have Been the Only Normal Thing About 2020
The U.S. Census Bureau undercounted Texas and California, overcounted Minnesota and missed a lot of kids. But it could have been a lot worse.
A mural overlooks part of the downtown skyline in Houston, Texas, on March 10, 2021. According to an Urban Institute simulation, the 2020 census undercounted the city’s residents by 1.38%.
Photographer: MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images
Even before the pandemic arrived, the 2020 U.S. census faced a mountain of challenges.
The underfunded project deployed brand-new technology for collecting questionnaires and processing data, which were never fully tested. President Donald Trump’s White House attempted to tack on a question about citizenship — a partisan maneuver that may have helped undermine trust in the count. One leading statistician said that the census was being “sabotaged.” Social scientists warned of a decennial doomsday: a severe 2020 undercount of Black and Latino populations.