[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

United States
Counting heads
Nov 13th 2009
America’s census will make for political mischief
Every ten years since 1790, the United States has held a census. In that respect 2010 will be no different
from any other year ending with a zero. Indeed it would be a breach of the constitution to let it pass without a
count of everyone living in the country, whether legally resident or not. This census will be relatively modest
in ambit. Instead of asking more than 50 questions, as before, the 2010 form will pose only ten, and will, it is
hoped, take no more than ten minutes to complete. For the first time, too, some questionnaires—13m out of
the total of over 120m—will be distributed in both English and Spanish. Chinese, Korean, Russian and
Vietnamese versions will be available on request.
The longer form used to be sent to only a selection of households, from which general conclusions were
inferred. The details about income, housing, education, commuting and employment that it elicited are now
gathered by an annual survey of a small proportion of the population. Hence the new, shorter form, which will
merely count people and provide basic information about their names, ages, sex, ethnicity and so on.
Boring? In countries like Sweden censuses are dull affairs that excite only statisticians and trend-spotters, not
trend-setters. In countries like Nigeria they precipitate coups or tribal warfare. Reactions in America fall
between these extremes, but the norm is controversy.
The first disagreements were among the Founding Fathers, who could not agree on what constituted a person.
The infamous compromise that found its way into the constitution counted slaves as just three-fifths of a
“free” person. That may today seem like a concession to the wicked slave-owners. In fact, the slave-holding
states wanted their captives to count as full persons, whereas the saintly states that held no slaves wanted
them to count for nothing, like native Americans. The reason was that the census was to be used as the basis
for representation in Congress and also in the Electoral College, which chooses the president, so all states
wanted to maximise their populations, or diminish others’.
The census was also used in the early days for calculating direct taxation, as it had been in the days of Caesar
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