What’s new for the 2020 Census?

Every 10 years, the U.S. government counts every person living in the country. The nation's founders mandated the decennial census in the Constitution.

It's the largest peacetime government project in the country. Officials estimate that overall costs for the 2020 Census will approach a record $16 billion, with peak employment of more than half a million people. While the counting is still months away, planning started years ago.

The coming census also will break with history with a controversial restoration of a citizenship question, as well as with the adoption of new technologies that change how the count is performed

The census will move away from paper as the primary way to collect data, for the first time since it began in 1790. You will be able to answer the census on the Internet, and census workers in the field will use mobile phone apps.

For the first time since 1880, census workers probably won't visit your neighborhood to confirm your address. Instead, they're relying mostly on high-resolution imagery to verify their maps.

The modern census is actually a series of major operations. It starts with building a list of everyone’s home address, work that is already well underway. Then there's an outreach and advertising campaign to build a census buzz, especially around the first of the year. After that comes the survey for every home. And finally, there will be a massive follow-up operation that sends census takers to knock on the doors of homes that haven't responded.

Here's a look at what's new at each stage of the 2020 Census, and how it's different from the last count in 2010.

A lot of shoe leather has been replaced by in-office studies of high-resolution images.

Back in 2010, census fieldworkers prepared for the head count by walking almost every block in the nation to update home addresses and maps. For 2020, most addresses have already been validated by workers who studied aerial imagery of neighborhoods over time. Only blocks that appear to have changed will be visited by census workers.

The Census Bureau is preparing its biggest push ever in advertising and outreach for 2020, with a special focus on digital advertising and social media. Some state and local governments, as well as nonprofits, also plan to spend record amounts for census promotion.

In Alabama, where officials are alarmed over the possible loss of a seat in Congress after the 2020 Census, some 340 cities and counties have helped census workers verify addresses, a key to getting a complete count. That's more than twice the number that partnered with the prior census. State officials aim to mobilize influential people in education, churches and industry and even famous athletes to help boost census responses.

Kenneth Boswell, who leads Alabama's economic development office as well as it's census push, said the state also wants to counter distrust of the federal government and reassure people that “the federal government is not wanting to get into your business. The federal government is not going to sell your information."

In California, state and local officials study maps of hard-to-count neighborhoods, home to some 10 million people, where census studies predict a lower response rate. The recession-stressed state spent $2 million promoting the census 10 years ago but now has committed $100 million for 2020, and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is seeking $54 million more.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said state and local leaders are more engaged in promoting the census because they're concerned that it will be underfunded at the federal level for dealing with an increasing reluctance of citizens to answer.

"It's going to be an incredibly heavy lift," Vargas said, "and the Census Bureau knows that they need to spend more money than had planned for outreach and television and radio and social media, collateral material. They need more partnership specialists, they need more community organizers."

Most homes are expected to answer the 2020 Census online or by phone. Households will be mailed letters with census instructions, beginning in March.

Paper forms will still go to areas that have less Internet access or are viewed as less likely to respond. More paper forms will be sent out in April as reminders. Census officials say they will be ready to process these forms for about 30 percent of households.

“Just to put it simply, everyone will have a chance to respond to the census the way they choose to respond," said Al Fontenot, associate director for decennial census programs, "online, over the phone or on paper.”

No matter the medium, you respond to the census by answering a handful of questions for every person in the house. Officials say it should take you 10 minutes or less. The questions ask for name, age, sex, Hispanic origin, race, relationship in the household, homeownership and citizenship.

The citizenship question ("Is this person a citizen of the United States?") is on other government surveys but hasn't been asked on the decennial census since 1950. Challenges to its inclusion will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this year. Critics fear it will discourage participation, especially among minority and immigrant households, while the Trump administration says the information is needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

A few weeks after Census Day, which is April 1, 2020, census takers will start visiting the millions of homes that didn't respond. This follow-up operation is labor-intensive, so it can really drive up costs if initial response rates lag.

The 2020 Census will be the second attempt to move away from paper in follow-up operations. The original plan for the 2010 Census plan was to use custom handheld devices, the same ones used for validating addresses, for following up with non-responders. But the handhelds didn't work as expected in tests, so 2010 follow-up was done using paper forms after all.

There’s a lot at stake

The census is a massive and complex project, and attempts to modernize it can introduce new challenges as well. People's attitudes toward their personal data are shifting, and scaremongering or outright disinformation could drive down response rates. And there’s a risk that equipment or software won’t perform properly, or even be susceptible to hacking.

Census officials say plans to secure the census include encrypting all response data to prevent unauthorized use, rigorous monitoring of response patterns and enlisting help from organizations like the Department of Homeland Security.

The census is a tempting target for disruption, because it's so important to democracy. For a government to represent people and fairly fund its programs, it has to know how many people there are and where they live. In 2016, the federal government distributed about $883 billion under programs that relied on 2010 Census data, according to the George Washington Institute of Public Policy. The institute's "Counting for Dollars 2020" project estimates that the funding for each state ranged from $1.4 billion, for Wyoming, to $115.1 billion, for California.

"So I think you have a lot of cities that are just looking at what's at stake, and they're deciding to make an investment in census preparations because they've done the calculus," said Brian Egan, a lobbyist with the National League of Cities.

Alabama's Boswell said increased census participation when he was mayor of the city of Enterprise played a key role in spurring retail development. "That is the importance, not only the funding that comes from the feds, but that's how you can grow your cities and that's how you can grow your counties just by getting your census numbers up," he said.

The first population counts from the new census will be used to fulfill the survey’s constitutional purpose: re-allocating congressional seats among states. It's an event that Minnesota has been preparing for for years.

In the 2010 congressional reapportionment, Minnesota barely held on to its eighth House seat. "So we know about life on the bubble," said Bob Tracy of the Minnesota Census Mobilization Partnership. A bill to put $2.5 million into promoting census participation is before the Minnesota legislature, and census proponents there hope to raise another $2.5 million from companies and nonprofits. Tracy said the loss of a congressional seat would be a "cataclysmic political event in the state."

Minnesota is among nine states that could lose a congressional seat under a theoretical reapportionment scenario developed by The Washington Post and based on comparative estimated population changes since 2010. Six other states could gain seats.

Projected congressional reapportionment after the 2020 Census

While the risk of losing a congressional seat drives census interest among Minnesota politicians and business leaders, outreach efforts will also be aimed at hard-to-count communities, like people living in rural areas, people who move frequently and minorities.

Tracy said the sales pitch to these communities begins with the role of census data in bringing funding for roads, schools and health services. But it also includes messages like “ ‘Nobody is going to erase my identity. I belong here. I am here, and I'm going to be counted here.’ I’ve heard some people use the language ‘You can't resist if you don't exist.’ So it's also a pushback on [the Trump] administration's immigration policies and policies toward communities of color more generally.”

The move to Internet and phone responses will also play a role in the strategies of state and local governments and census partners to promote participation. In Los Angeles, where $1.2 million is going to census promotion, city officials have identified more than 200 government offices where they can host Internet-connected computers for people to answer the census. They're working to line up more at community partner nonprofits and private firms.

Maria de la Luz Garcia, who heads the L.A. mayor's office Census 2020 Initiative that started in 2017, said well over half of city residents live in hard-to-count neighborhoods, and in some areas like South Los Angeles, only about half of homes have Internet.

“The county of Los Angeles is the hardest-to-count county in the country, and the city of Los Angeles is the largest city in the county, making us likely the hardest-to-count city,” Garcia said. “… We are stepping up and trying to address the challenges that come with that title.”

The Census Bureau's Fontenot said the new response options make it easier for people to answer the census “right then and there,” at events such as conferences, sports games, or after religious services in a church, synagogue or mosque. "We’ve not been able to do this before, and we think it’s a great opportunity to encourage people to act while census is top of mind."