Census forms arrive in mail

The 2010 U.S. Census forms should have arrived in your mailbox on Monday.
Morganton Postmaster Larry Taylor estimates his office's carriers yesterday delivered an additional 8,000 to 10,000 pieces of first-class mail for the U.S. Census Bureau. Those census forms are among 1 million distributed in the Greensboro District, 120 million nationwide.
Carriers in Glen Alpine, Drexel, Valdese, Icard, Nebo Rutherford College, Connelly Springs and Jonas Ridge also delivered the 1.2-ounce envelopes and forms.
"It's a good-sized letter," Taylor said. And because it's first-class mail, carriers had to deliver every piece in one day to nearly every address on his office's 32 routes. Each route has 700 to 900 deliverable addresses.
If you didn't get a census form Monday, Taylor said it's not because the postal service missed your address. The U.S. Census Bureau has its own list of addresses, Taylor explained, and it's separate from the USPS list. So, the Census Bureau might not have an address for the place where you live. And in some other cases, Taylor said, the Census Bureau sent forms to nonexistent addresses.
"If there's a bad address, we have to return it to them so they can try to contact the individual," Taylor said.
This is the official form; don't expect another.
"This is it," according to Taylor. "A letter last week told you to expect it. This is the one that's supposed to have the 10 questions."
The 10-question form is one of the shortest in the history of the census. It asks a person's name, address, phone number, age, race and ethnicity, gender, living arrangements and home ownership. The information is kept strictly confidential under federal law. The Census Bureau does not share data with other agencies, including law enforcement.
Failure to respond to the census carries a fine of up to $5,000, although that law is rarely enforced.
The decennial census, required by the U.S. Constitution every 10 years, produces a population count that helps determine the size of congressional districts and how the federal government divvies up more than $400 billion in aid.
"When you receive your 2010 census, please fill it out and mail it back," said Census Bureau director Robert Groves, who was set to kick off the national mail-in campaign Monday in Phoenix, Ariz., a state which could gain up to two U.S. House seats because of rapid immigrant growth in the last decade.
Groves is urging cities and states to promote the census and improve upon rates in 2000, when about 72 percent of U.S. households returned their forms. If everyone who receives a census form mails it back, the government could save an estimated $1.5 billion in follow-up visits.
Groves remains particularly concerned about motivating young adults. Many 20-somethings now on their own were living with their parents in 2000, so they haven't had the experience of filling out census forms.
"If the American public comes through in the way everyone is capable of, we'll have a great census," Groves said.
The next few weeks will be critical. The Census Bureau predicts that maybe two-thirds of U.S. households will mail in the form. In addition to motivating young people, the Census Bureau faces special challenges of growing U.S. apathy toward surveys, residents displaced by a high number of foreclosures, as well as immigrants who have become more distrustful of government workers amid a crackdown on illegal immigration.
From May until July the bureau will send census-takers to each home that doesn't reply by mail, which sometimes leads to more inaccurate responses.
In 2000, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Texas all had below-average mail participation rates of less than 70 percent. Since then, many of these states have seen higher rates of foreclosures and rapid increases of Hispanics or blacks who are often more reluctant to turn in their forms. Each of these states stands to gain at least one U.S. House seat and Texas as many as four.
In 2000, the Census Bureau for the first time had a nationwide overcount of 1.3 million people, mostly from duplicate counts of more affluent whites with multiple homes. Still, 4.5 million people were ultimately missed, mostly lower-income blacks and Hispanics.
As part of its outreach, the Census Bureau for the first time is mailing out bilingual English-Spanish census forms to 13 million households. Census forms are also available upon request in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Russian, and assistance guides are available in 59 languages at www.2010census.gov.
Beginning next week, the Census Bureau will publish daily real-time data on 2010 mail-back participation rates for the U.S. broken down by state, county, city and zip code.

On the Net:
Foreign language census forms: www.2010census.gov
Sample 2010 census form: http://tinyurl.com/yfurltt
Regional mail participation rates for 2000: http://tinyurl.com/yh4wmx9

Hope Yen of The Associated press contributed to this article.