The census conducted in the U.S. every 10 years is meant to count everyone. But it doesn’t actually count everyone.
After every census, the U.S. Census Bureau reports how well it did at counting every person in the country. In 2020, as in past years, the census didn’t get a completely accurate count, according to the bureau’s own reporting. The official census number reported more non-Hispanic whites and people of Asian backgrounds in the U.S. than there actually were. And it reported too few Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans who live on reservations.
The Conversation U.S. asked Aggie Yellow Horse, a sociologist and demographer at Arizona State University, to explain why, and how, the census misses people, and how it’s possible to assess who wasn’t counted.
1. Who gets missed in the census?
The people most commonly missed are those with low income, people who rent or don’t have homes at all, people who live in rural areas and people who don’t speak or read English well. Often, these are people of color – Black Americans; Indigenous peoples; or people of Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander backgrounds.