Week 3 Response Rate Analysis; Trendlines Added to the Map
This email update includes:
- Our latest analysis of the nation's self-response rate trends, covering Week 3, from April 3 though April 9.
- A description of new trendline charts displayed at our map for each tract, city, county, tribal area, congressional district and state.
- An updated list of organizations that are leveraging the HTC/Response Rate map in their work.
Week 3 analysis
In collaboration with the Census Counts 2020 coalition and the Funders Census Initiative, here is our latest update examining response rate trends across the country: Mapping Self-Response for a Fair and Accurate 2020 Census (Week 3). In light of the White House announcement of its proposed request to delay the submission of apportionment counts to Congress as the census proceeds amid the COVID-19 outbreak, tracking self-response rates to help monitor the success of the 2020 Census takes on greater importance.
Our Week 3 update addresses several important concerns about the 2020 Census, from the impact of the suspension of Update/Leave operations on tribal areas, to the uneven pattern of response rates across cities of different sizes, to ongoing concerns about rates that continue to be relatively low for historically undercounted populations such as children under 5, people of color (especially in larger cities), high poverty areas, and census tracts considered hard-to-count based on 2010 mail return rates.
On a national basis, the latest response rates continue to trend upward, though at a slower pace than the prior two weeks, as you can see from the chart below. But since last Wednesday the Census Bureau has been mailing paper questionnaires to non-responding households and reminder letters to housing units with mailable addresses that are part of the Update/Leave operation. We will be watching to see if these reminder mailings help boost response rates this week (the reminders are scheduled to continue through April 16). Importantly, these reminders will be the first household-specific communication from the Census Bureau to most homes covered by Update/Leave, describing how these residents can respond to the census. Response rates in areas covered by Update/Leave continue to be very low, on average.
The chart below visualizes the day-to-day response rates in 2010 (the long red line) compared with the rates so far in 2020 (the shorter red line noted with the arrow). The other lines represent state-by-state response rates in 2020. (The Census Bureau did not publish daily response rates from 2010 at the state level.) Be mindful caution of the differences in census operations between 2010 and now and also of course the impact from the pandemic when comparing rates for the same 2010 and 2020 dates. The final 2010 self-response rate nationally and for states and local communities may provide a more important metric for census stakeholders to aim to meet and surpass.
Self-response trendlines: visualizing response rate change over time
The HTC 2020/Response Rate map provides several visual and quantitative metrics to track local, regional, and nationwide response rates. Stakeholders are interested in following how their community is doing over time, and we have responded to that feedback by adding a "trendline" chart for each of the 84,000 census tracts, 34,000 or so cities and towns, 3,100 counties, 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the hundreds of tribal areas and congressional districts on the map.
Here's a screen image of one of these trendlines. This example focuses on a census tract in the Bronx, NY, outlined in red on the map. The trendline chart in the left-hand panel shows:
- the overall response rate for the tract, color-coded for each day to match the color shading on the map;
- a separate trendline (the thinner green line) representing the internet-only self-response rates;
- an interactive label for the response rates that changes as you move your mouse over the trendline; and
- the final 2010 self-response rate for historical comparison (the dashed grey line across the top).
The trendline feature can help reveal local differences in response trends. The screen images below highlight two census tracts in Oakland, CA. The first one, tract 4027, is shown in purple to indicate that its housing units received "Internet First" mailings from the Census Bureau. The response rate for this tract is just under 40%, and the trendline shows that almost all of those responses were submitted online (the light green trendline for internet response is almost identical to the color-coded trendline showing overall response). Almost all households in this tract have an internet subscription at home.
The second image (below) shows the adjacent tract 4026, displayed in green because its housing units received "Internet Choice" mailings that included the paper questionnaire. This tract has a higher response rate, just over 53%, and only about half of these responses were submitted online. The 23-percentage-point gap between the color-coded line for overall response and the light green line for internet-only response represents the share of responses submitted either via paper questionnaire or by phone. More than 30% of this tract's households do not have home internet access.
Local census stakeholders can use this information to plan their outreach accordingly to non-responding households in these tracts, either emphasizing the ease of online response when that option is readily available, or reminding householders to check their mail for paper questionnaires that either already were sent or are arriving this week.
Please let us know if these trendline charts are helpful, and if you have suggestions for improvement. We're planning to produce comparison trendlines on a nationwide and regional scale so you can quickly and easily compare response rate trends over time for multiple states, counties, and other areas.
Putting the HTC/Response Rate map to effective use
A growing number of census stakeholders have highlighted our map at their websites and/or have used our response rate analyses in their work, and several media outlets have featured the map as a resource for their viewers/readers. Here are some recent examples:
Please let us know if we've missed any other examples.
Links to earlier updates
Make sure to follow us on Twitter at @Census2020Map !
The HTC 2020 map is a work in progress. Other recent updates and enhancements are described here:
- April 7, 2020: Week 2 Response Rate analysis; Tribal Lands added to the map.
- April 3, 2020: Census 2020 HTC map news: "Census Day" Self-Response Bump; Data Q&A.
- March 31, 2020: Week 1 Response Rate analysis.
- March 23, 2020: Update on mapping self-response rates, with emphasis on the 2020 progress bar that fills in daily after the latest rates are published, easy share/embed options for your map, and some notes on the data.
- March 19 2020: In a joint statement with our colleagues at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), we highlighted the importance of a fair and accurate 2020 Census as the coronavirus challenges grow, and lifted up the resources available at our HTC 2020 map to help inspire Americans to fill out the 2020 Census form on their own. Self-responding helps ensure that the Census Bureau collects reliable data about the nation's population. And self-responding is a way to practice social distancing because it avoids a knock at your door later on from a census taker.
- March 2020: The HTC map is now focused on census self-response rates. All the former info at the map is still there. But now that census mailings are going out, the map has been updated to reflect 2010 response rates in anticipation of integrating 2020 real-time rates after March 20. NB: the map not only displays response rates for each state, county, and tract, but also include a bar chart in the map's left-hand panel that shows the 2010 rate (and 2000, for historical context) for now. The 2020 column in the bar chart is empty, but it will start to go up after March 20. How quickly and how far it rises depends on local census stakeholders!
- February 2020: New data on the risk of undercounting young children, in collaboration with the Population Reference Bureau. For more info, visit PRB's website.
- January 2020: To help promote the official start of the 2020 Census in Alaska, we added a special "It Starts Here" (in Toksook Bay, AK) graphic on the map. Updates in January also included new 2014-2018 population estimates for tracts, counties, states, and legislative districts, and more.
- December 2019: New advanced tract search feature, statewide maps of Census Bureau contact strategies, and more.
- November 2019: Comprehensive information for all 2020 Census contact techniques combined in one place at the HTC 2020 map, so census stakeholders can more easily inform local residents about what to expect when the 2020 decennial census takes place. Also see the CUNY Center for Urban Research website for a state-by-state analysis.
- October 2019: Updates to TEA designations; the latest examples of groups using the HTC map across the country; enhancing the HTC metrics with the Census Bureau's "low response score", the Urban Institute's projections of undercount by state; & more.
- August 2019: In-Field Address Canvassing areas & stats on the map; organizations that are using the HTC map for local grant assistance; new examples of linking to and/or embedding the HTC map.
- July 2019: new feature to highlight tracts based on share of households without internet access; a list of other census maps nationwide, and more.
- June 2019: Census contacts by state/county; census tract search feature.
- April 2019: customized printing, data downloads, and more.
- March 2019: mapping Type of Enumeration Areas (TEA) and Area Census Offices (ACOs)
- January 2019: new ACS data for the 2013-17 period (including internet access), new legislative info, public library locations, and tribal lands added to the map.
If you haven't signed up for our HTC 2020 map updates, please do so here.
We look forward to hearing your suggestions for improving the map. Please contact the Mapping Service at the CUNY Graduate Center with your feedback.
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