2010 and 2011 - Census Bureau

Figure 6.
Productivity Varies Widely Across Regions: Ratio of Actual to Expected
Completions for Regional Census Centers
Atlanta
Boston
Charlotte
Chicago
Dallas
Denver
Detroit
Kansas City
Los Angeles
New York
Philadelphia
Seattle
and Dallas performed considerably
worse.
Our analysis also examined
how the data collected during
nonresponse follow-up affected
differences in final response
rates across groups of concern.
Figure 7 shows rates of response
through mailout/mailback and
through enumeration (NRFU)
by the share of minorities in a
tract’s population. Information
about April 1st inhabitants of
a housing unit provided by
people not living there on April
1st—known as proxy response
—is treated as nonresponse
here. Figure 7 shows that mail
response rates strongly negatively
correlate with percent
minority. Tracts with populations
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4
Actual/forecast
that are less than 25 percent
minority had about eleven
percentage points higher average
response rates than tracts
with populations that are more
than 75 percent minority. The
correlation is much weaker in
nonresponse follow-up, where
75 percent minority tracts had
approximately three percentage
points lower interview rates.
Nonresponse follow-up thus
reduced the differential undercount
of minorities relative to
the count at the end of the mailback
period.
Figure 8 shows the odds ratios
of selected variables in tractlevel
grouped logistic regressions
of response rates separately
for mailout/mailback
(in blue) and nonresponse
follow-up (in red). The results
provide further support for the
story suggested by Figure 7.
Even after controlling for other
factors, minority race/ethnicity
groups have well-below-average
mailout/mailback response
rates, but their nonresponse
follow-up response rates are not
nearly so low. Unemployment
has a positive association with
response rates, but the magnitude
of the effect is very
small. Richer neighborhoods
have slightly higher mailout/
mailback response rates and
slightly lower nonresponse
follow-up response rates. Areas
with a high concentration of
retirement-aged persons have
very high mailout/mailback
U.S. Census Bureau Research at the Center for Economic Studies and the Research Data Centers: 2010–2011 19