The only purpose the census serves is to keep unskilled people employed.

Do elaborate. I always thought it was used for determining seats in the House of Representatives and to allocate funds.

too many races on the census form. I thought we are now a post-racial society.

I sent mine back already. It took about two minutes to fill out, seriously. I checked other and wrote "human" for race, as I always do.

DON'T forget people, that in 75 years, when the 2010 Census data will no longer be confidential to the general public, this will be one way for your future family members to track you! So be accurate in describing your age and where you live (and don't put your name in two places) if you want to be tracked properly by a genealogist down the line.

NYC needs to lose a few representatives.

the forms were just sent last week.

how long does the NYPD return forms for the citizens of NYC? see the visa post above. shut up bloomberg.

I always check "Pacific Islander".

A lot of New Yorkers are still looking for the "Other" box under gender.

Maybe it's because certain lunatics have convinced a few people that the census is actually a conspiracy to round up everyone and send them to a work camp where the CIA will put chips in their brains to control their thoughts.

hehehe,

yeah those lunatics who don't trust the goverment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100324/cm_csm/289911

'In the 1940 Census, the Census Bureau loudly assured people that their responses would be kept confidential. Within four days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census Bureau had produced a report listing the Japanese-American population in each county on the West Coast. The Census Bureau launched this project even before Congress declared war on Japan. The Census Bureau’s report helped the US Army round up more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans for concentration camps (later renamed “internment centers”).

hahhaha

or even more recently

In 2003-04, the Census Bureau provided the Department of Homeland Security with a massive cache of information on how many Arab Americans lived in each ZIP Code around the nation, and which country they originated from. Such information could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated. But the Census Bureau denied it had done anything wrong in providing such information.

NYC has a very high population of immigrants so it makes sense our rate is so low.

i got at LEAST 2 "reminders" that the census form was coming, after the census form came, i received ANOTHER "reminder" reminding me to fill it out. what a waste of paper!! and money!!! why can't people just be more responsible to begin with. they should just line us up and count our heads.

"The Census Bureau projects for every one percentage point increase in the national mail back participation rate for the 2010 Census, the federal government saves $85 million in taxpayer money - it costs substantially more money to send census takers to households that fail to mail back their short 10 question form than it does to receive it by mail."

http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/2010-census-ad-campaign-positioned-to-save-taxpayers-millions-helping-boost-mail-back-participation.html

Seriously? This is basic mail response rate methodology.

Response rates for mail-outs are pretty low, which is obviously a problem when you're trying to collect data from an entire population of people. It's generally well-understood now that sending letters ahead of time to prime people about the survey that will come helps response rates. They're less likely to dismiss it as junk mail if they've read about it once before and recognize the sender. Also, it's best to send a follow-up, and there are other tactics that should be used to maximize response rates.

A good summary: http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=8&n=18

So, while it might seem like it costs more money, in the end it actually is more cost-effective, as it prevents the need to send people to non-responders houses for personal interviews, or secondary mail-outs. Also, it greatly improves the conclusions you'll make from the data if you're reducing non-random missing data from your sample.

The census is supposed to be strictly a head count to determine representation in congress. These questions about race and ethnicity are out of line. No doubt they'll be used to gerrymander districts on racial lines.

No, they need those ethnic statistics because they know which groups vote and which don't. That makes the gerrymandering easier.

Aren't you supposed to wait until 4/1/2010 to fill out the form?

no, thats when theyre due by

So how come one of the questions is, "Who else was staying here on April 1?" Looks to me like you have to wait until that day is in the past before you check the box to say you got lucky that night or a friend passed out on your couch.

This census seems pretty lame to me. It's only got 10 questions and half of them are "what color are you?" I checked the Canadian and UK ones online. They're pretty long and ask about home, car, education, health, employment, race and even religion. Seemed much more useful to me.