Census Guarantees Its Workers Will Cheat and Cut Corners
In my view, the struggle over the deadline for the U.S. Census made it inevitable that field workers would falsify their reports, and that number crunchers will cut corners in the coming weeks to complete the work by December 31, the new(old) deadline for reporting the census results.
Before the pandemic, the 10 year U.S. Census was to be conducted entirely within 2020. Households received census forms to complete ahead of the April census date. After that April date, field workers were to fan out across the U.S. and interview anyone who had not voluntarily filed a census form. With the pandemic delaying the start of field work, the deadline to complete the field phase, July 31, was extended to October 31. The date for completing number crunching was extended from December to April 2021.
Alas, like so many things in 2020, politics intervened and Secretary of Labor Wilbur Ross, whose department conducts the census, decided to move up those dates, leaving less time for the field work and dramatically less time for the number crunching. Critics charged that his goal was to reduce the number of poor and people of color counted in the census, which would have the effect of giving them less representation in Congress and their locales smaller federal disbursements. He denied any political motivation.
Ross wanted to end field work in September and restore the December 31 date for completing all number crunching. Conflicting legal challenges and rulings left the fieldwork to be completed early in October and the entire census by December 31.
Already there are reports that the field workers, pressed by impossible deadlines, falsified their reports. In at least four states, some households were contacted only once but marked twice. In other cases, they were marked “refused to answer questions” when the census worker had never been to the home. In yet other cases, field workers simply estimated the number of people living in housing unit. Supervisors were accused of pressuring census workers to cheat in these ways so they could “close cases” and complete their work on time.
Now reports of anomalies are challenging the plan to complete the number crunching phase by December 31. Certainly the pressures on the statisticians doing this work will be as great as the pressures on the field staff. Any measure of ethics risk would predict that corners will be cut and numbers fudged if the December 31 is to be met.
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