As mandated by the Constitution, a Census must occur nationwide every ten years. For the 2010 Census, with the hope of increasing people’s participation, the government launched a massive campaign. In the past, the Census has proved to not only be a money-draining endeavor, costing billions of taxpayer dollars, but it is also a time-consuming one, with hundreds of man-hours going into the process, and this census is no different. The 2010 Census is already over its allotted budget for the campaign.
The census is used to determine district lines as well as how many seats in the House of Representatives each state is allotted. Therefore, the Census itself is very important to many political figures and has made it a top priority despite its costs. However, in the last census, there was only a 67% return rate for the questionnaires. For such a costly process, this isn’t acceptable.
The 2000 Census director, Louis Kincannon, told Fox News, “Costs are escalating, mainly driven by wage costs and the escalation through inflation.” This increase in costs and wages paid to the thousands of workers put the Census over budget before 2010 even arrived. Last summer, when workers canvassed and verified addresses throughout the country, the process cost $444,000,000.
The very process of the Census has never been economically efficient. The wages, the paper, the printing, and other necessary aspects of the Census, all add up to billions of dollars. Additionaly, when it comes to counting each individual resident of this country, the methods of clipboard, pen, and paper are antiquated. A hope for the 2010 Census was that technology would allow some censuses to be filled out through secure handheld devices.
However, the devices and the necessary security measures have added up to the devices potentially costing $600,000,000. This cost, for many of the census workers, is worthwhile and will provide a more efficient system. To use paper and ink would add an estimated $1 billion to $12 billion dollars to the Census cost, according to The Washington Post.
While the Census campaign provides hundreds of thousands of jobs to people in the 500 bases across the country, their ways of training and utilizing their workers are, again, ineffective, being both money- and time-consuming. In one instance, the Census Bureau reported to Fox News that they spent $5.5 million to train 15,000 workers, most of which worked either very little or not at all. With the Census already over budget, it is foolish to spend money and not utilize the effects.
As 2010 is already one fourth over, it seems that the Census Bureau needs to buckle down, reorganize, and revamp their methods. According to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, which is the parent agency of the Census Bureau, these modifications are being instated as quickly as possible. The main target of these changes will be reconfiguring the arrangement between the Census Bureau and a private contractor so as to best utilize both sources.
The Census is underway, and even though it must overcome some already-hefty problems from over-budgeting, the crucial nature of the Census should lead to its successful completion. Hopefully it won’t cause taxpayers across the country to slide into another economic tailspin because they have to provide the funds to be counted in their own country’s census.
