This week I’ve been privy to some frustrated mumblings and postal woes. Though snail mail is normally a topic far from my email-centric universe, this week is different – it’s Census Week – well, kind of. You see, many people are a little confused, or perhaps perturbed is more appropriate, about the census arriving not once, but twice – again, kind of.
Last week, 120 million households across the country received an “advance mailing” from the Census Bureau. A seemingly redundant letter, the mailing informed recipients that they would soon receive the actual census mailing. More specifically, it warned them that they would receive their census in the coming week and that it was important they fill it out. This mailing cost the Census Bureau a total of $57 million and was sent to 120 million (90%) households across the country.
With unemployment hovering around the double digits and an economy in need of intensive care, taxpayers are understandably perplexed by this use of their dwindling dollars. Intrigued by their queries, and yet convinced of an unseen strategy, I channeled my inner Sherlock and began my hunt for answers.
It turns out that this year’s decennial census may cost as much as $14 billion ($45/person) to complete. Around $300 million ($1/person) of that budget will be spent on advertising to raise awareness among the estimated 45% of the population that doesn’t know the census is even taking place. Whereas a census form returned through the mail costs $0.42 (postage stamp), every household that fails to respond costs $57 (human census taker).
Based on statistics collected from the Census Bureau’s first advance mailing, which took place in 2000, the warning letter increases the mail-in response rate by 6-12%. The Census Bureau estimates that for every single percentage point increase in the mail-in response rate, they save $85 million. At the conservative estimate of a 6% response rate increase, that’s $510 million! The $57 million spent on a warning letter no longer seems so wasteful. In fact, it’s pretty genius in a nerdy, budgety, penny-pinching taxpayer kind of way.
In an ideal world, we’d receive, respond to, and return the census by mail. No pre-warning, no post-visit. However, since a hearty chunk of the American populace (over 25%) fails to carry out this civic duty, we are blessed with not one, but two mailings and in many cases a follow-up by a human version of the census, a census-taker.
This year, in this economy, let’s use our common census. Fill it out and send it back by April 1, 2010.
Massive blow-up census in front of Union Station, Washington, DC