census
Scientific census-taking in the United States began with the decennial census of 1850, when the scope and methods were greatly improved by making the individual the unit of study. In 1902 the Bureau of the Census was established in the Dept. of the Interior; the following year it was transferred to the Dept. of Commerce and Labor and remained in the Dept. of Commerce when the Dept. of Labor was separated (1913). In addition to being a vital source of statistical data about the nation, information from the U.S. census is also used to allocate federal resources.
The government was criticized and also sued for undercounting the homeless and minorities in the 1990 census. In 1996 the Supreme Court ruled that the decision to adjust the count is left to the discretion of the secretary of commerce. The government proposed remedying the problem of undercounting through the use of statistical adjustments to the 2000 census, but the Supreme Court ruled (1998) against the plan, and the traditional head-count method prevailed. In 2001 the government again decided to use unadjusted census figures. About 3.3 million people, largely minorities, were estimated to have been missed by the 2000 census; a smaller number were thought to have been counted twice. Unadjusted census figures are generally believed to favor Republicans in the drawing of districts for the House of Representatives. A move by the Trump administration to include a question on U.S. citizenship, which had not been widely asked since 1950, on the 2020 census resulted in a legal battle in which the Supreme Court criticized the reasons the government gave in court as contrived; the move had been attacked by Democrats as an attempt to reduce the participation of households with immigrants.
See W. S. Holt, The Bureau of the Census (1929, repr. 1974); F. Yates, Sampling Methods for Censuses and Surveys (4th ed. 1980); M. J. Anderson, The American Census (1990); S. Roberts, Who We Are: A Portrait of America Based on the 1990 Census (1994).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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