“The career staff at the Census Bureau are really, really good and really committed to an accurate count,” he said. Outside experts disputed that charge, noting that Congress had ordered the Census Bureau to spend no more than $13 billion on the 2020 census, and then cut even more from Obama administration budget requests that sought to meet that mandate. “The last thing we want to do in this current debate,” he said, “is to make this a base metal.”The bureau has been working on the 2020 count since the 2010 census was completed. The 2010 census actually overcounted non-Hispanic whites by 0.8 percent and undercounted African-Americans by 2.1 percent and Hispanics by 1.5 percent. “The record of the census in counting people from all income groups, all racial and ethnic groups, is really extraordinary,” said Steve H. Murdock, a Rice University sociologist who led the Census Bureau under President George W. Bush.

Source: New York Times December 09, 2017 23:04 UTC