Forget April 15th, for AGS the key date this year is April 1st, the day the census is officially conducted. For most people, the survey instrument came in the mail mid-March, delivered by address each with address specific logon credentials. “Filling out” the census online took very little time, as it really asks very little beyond basic demographics – age, sex, race, Hispanic origin and ancestry – about individuals, plus the relationships between the people living there in order to determine basic household structure characteristics. The only additional question related to tenure and presence of a mortgage. The survey application is easy to use, and explains thoroughly why the Census bureau wants to know each item.
You can track the progress of “self-response” rates – that is, surveys answered without requiring further in-person visits live at https://2020census.gov/en/response-rates.html, the map here was for March 21. The hope is that self-response rates will be much higher than the 2010 Census which was about 67%.
In future articles over the next few months, we will discuss the data release schedule for the 2020 Census and its impact on AGS data products and very importantly, the Census Bureau’s “Differential Privacy” implementation and how it will affect small area data.
Don’t expect to see any data out of the 2020 Census until early in 2021 and full integration of the data by the fall of 2021!
If you have not yet responded to the Census, we urge you to do so today! Even if you haven’t got the mailing form, you can respond and do your part.
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