Bao - Census

I bought an issue of the Washington Post on April 1st and I was surprised to find that there was no article on the census. So I went online to the New York Times website and used the following articles to do my response (in case anyone would like to read them):
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01dakota.html?pagewanted=1
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01mississippi.html
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/us/31census.html

The first article described the high rate of response for a small town in North Dakota, where all of the 50 residents are anticipated to respond. Contrasting this with the population in the next article where in 2000, the census report counted one person for every 116 acres - a severely under-reported number. The challenge in the second case was to tackle the issues of education in a population that had high rates of poverty and illiteracy, as well as overcoming the fear of what the census was for. I found it interesting that in both articles, the attempt to spread information about the census seems to be equally as fervent, and yet it was clearly anticipated that the participation rate was going to be lower in the second article. I did wonder if there was anything misleading about the way in which the census was being publicized; the second article described a flyer which said "stand up and be counted," which is one of the basic requirements of the census. However, the third article brought up one of the issues that the Tea Party and other opponents of the census have had: that the Constitution only mandates a head count but that questions regarding family arrangements violate privacy. From the publicity in the second article, it makes it seem as though the census is purely a head count. But is it not true that the other questions asked are in some way irrelevant to the head count? So then should everyone be required to respond to these questions? From my own perspective, I understand that these counts are important not only to have an accurate number of people in our country, but also for future budgeting and demographic information. It seems unfortunate to me that there are people who refuse to respond because they are denying themselves a chance to be included in policies that have the potential of impacting their lives. On the other hand, I wonder if perhaps there is some way of estimating the number of people who don't participate in the census and if there is some way of making generalizations about that population? For instance, the second article assumed that the undercount of their county was due to illiteracy and poverty - can we learn anything else about these families such as their perception of the government? How they tend to live as families?

I also found an interesting magazine at the bookstore which had an article about the modern family and family values within a same-sex household. I will bring it to class on Tuesday in case we have time to discuss these magazines, since I thought it was particularly interesting.