Name: 美国人口普查的物流（The Logistics of the US Census）
Uploaded: 2021-06-09T13:29:45.000Z
Duration: 13 min 3 s
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This is one block in one city in one state of the United States.

The US Constitution's Article 1, Section 2 prescribes something that must happen on

this block: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several

States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers…

The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the

Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such

What that means is that every ten years, the US government must determine how many people

live on this block, in addition to how many people live on every other block in every

other city in every other state and territory of the United States.

They must determine the population of the country—a straightforward task, but one

that thousands of US Census Bureau employees spend a decade preparing for, and a year and

It turns out that counting more than 300 million people isn't exactly easy.

Instead of looking at how the Census counts every one of those hundreds of millions, lets

rather look at how they count the couple dozen people living on this one city block.

The Bureau started preparing for the 2020 Census on November 1st, 2011.

They have a staff of about 4,000 who plan and coordinate each Census, along the their

other programs, and then, every ten years, when it comes time to actually conduct the

Census, they employ more than half a million other individuals temporarily.

The 4,000 full-time employees, though, spend much of the decade forming their operational

plan, the first draft of which was done in late 2015.

They then spent the next three years refining that.

A significant element of this plan includes deciding where the Census' field offices

You see, the Census divides the country up into six regions which are headquartered with

permanent offices in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York

Then, within those regions, the Census opens up 248 temporary field offices to conduct

These field offices are distributed based on density so Colorado, for example, only

has four while New York, on the other hand, has 21.

Each of these offices has to hire hundreds or thousands of enumerators to go out into

Finding half a million temporary workers is, of course, incredibly difficult and it's

even more difficult for the 2020 census given that the country currently has the lowest

In order to attract those half million people they do have to account for the drastically

different wage conditions across the country.

Enumerators in Mesa County, Colorado, where our block is located, for example, are paid

$16.00 per hour which, for this area, is a pretty decent hourly wage—especially for

a low-skilled job requiring few qualifications.

Of course, if you offered that pay in New York City, on the other hand, it would be

far less attractive so the pay there is upped to between $25.00 and $28.00 an hour.

Despite the decent pay, though, the Census still always has enormous difficulty filling

all their positions so they spend years teeing up all these workers.

The first of the temporary hires for the 2020 Census happened in mid-2018.

That's because, before the Census can go and ask every household on this block how

many people live there, they have to figure out where each of these households is.

In the past ten years, new houses could have been built, structures could have been subdivided,

and plenty more could have changed so this is a crucial step for accuracy.

In addition, if a homeless person is living in this alley, if someone's living in a

motorhome in someone's driveway, or if there are any other abnormal residences, this too

Previously, the Census would have sent someone to walk this block, in addition to every other

block in the country, and mark down where each residence is, which clearly took an enormous

With the 2020 Census, though, they're shifting technique to use more and more satellite imagery

For example, it's hard to tell if this is one residence or two, so for any areas that

they're not sure about they'll still send people to check in person.

At the conclusion of this process, at least in theory, they should have a list of every

single place where people live in the US.

Also in 2018, the Census Bureau had to submit to Congress the questions they planned to

The Census is incredibly simple—after all, it has to be if they expect everyone to answer

It asks four background questions, five about the primary resident, then seven about every

Despite this, the Bureau spends an enormous amount of time debating how to ask these questions.

Question selection is so complex that they published a 98-page document explaining how

they selected the 2020 questions and their wording.

For example, in question three, for the non-primary residents, they added specification on whether

their relation to the primary resident was as a same-sex or opposite-sex couple.

In the past there was the option to mark the relation as a spouse or unmarried partner,

but there was no distinction between same-sex or opposite-sex.

They did, however, calculate what percentage of couples were same-sex based on how they

responded to the question asking if they were male or female.

Say there's a married couple living in this house consisting of one man and one woman.

If the woman accidentally marks her sex as male and also marked her relationship as a

spouse, they would be counted as a same-sex married couple.

Given that the overall proportion of Census-surveyed couples who are same-sex is small, these mistakes

With the redesign of this question, it acts as a failsafe so that even if the woman in

this house marks her sex as male, they'll still be counted as an opposite-sex couple.

These are the tiny details the Bureau has to think about for each and every question

They have to think about how to best structure them to get the best possible accuracy.

Once they have their questions, one of the final things the Census needs to figure out

is how they're actually going to ask for responses.

Our block is located in Grand Junction, Colorado, which is a small city, so it, along with most

of the country, simply receives a mailed invitation instructing the recipient to complete the

This works well for most of this relatively urban area, but not for all of it.

For example, residences in this small section of Grand Junction will receive both an invitation

to complete the Census online and a paper Census form.