More than one third of U.S. households are renters. The net undercount rate for people living in rental housing units in the 2010 Census was 1.1 percent compared to a net overcount of 0.6 percent for people living in owner-occupied housing units. Factors such as transitory status, poverty, and racial disparities can compound the risk of renters being undercounted.
The Leadership Conference Education Fund (The Education Fund) and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality (GCPI) are excited to release a new report, “Counting Everyone in the Digital Age: The Implications of Technology Use in the 2020 Decennial Census for the Count of Disadvantaged Groups.” Today’s technology provides both great opportunities to improve the Census, but also presents new challenges in counting everyone, especially members of historically disadvantaged groups. This report details these challenges and provides recommendations for a secure and accurate 2020 Census.
Young children–defined as children under age five–have been undercounted for decades, disadvantaging their families, communities, and neighborhoods. In the 2010 Census, the net undercount rate for young children was 4.6 percent, and more than 2.2 million in this age group were not included in the census results. This is a higher net undercount rate than for any other age group. Even among other children, those under five years old are more likely to be missing from census data.
Latinos have been historically undercounted for decades, in part due to the fact that roughly one in three Latinos live in hard-to-count census tracts. As a result, Latino children are among the most undercounted populations in the United States. Hispanic children under age five were overlooked at twice the rate of young non-Hispanic White children in the 2010 Census; up to 400,000 young Latino children were missed. Being undercounted potentially disadvantages Latino families, communities, and neighborhoods.
Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) have been undercounted for decades, disadvantaging their families, communities, and neighborhoods. Roughly one in five Asian Americans live in hard-to-count census tracts, along with one third of NHPI. Some Asian American and NHPI communities are especially at risk of being missed. They have greater challenges in finding stable and affordable housing, have higher incidences of poverty and unemployment and lower educational attainment, and encounter greater language barriers than other subgroups within this broad race category.