The Bureau takes extraordinary measures to produce a complete and accurate census. To date, for example, the Bureau has sent questionnaires to 120 million housing units for occupants to complete and mail back. The Bureau also hand- delivered around 12 million questionnaires—mostly in rural areas as well as in areas along the Gulf Coast affected by recent hurricanes—for residents to fill out and return via mail. In March and April, the Bureau simultaneously launched operations aimed at counting people in migrant worker housing, boats, tent cities, homeless shelters, nursing homes, dormitories, prisons, and other diverse dwellings, all in an effort to secure a complete count. For those individuals who do not mail back their census forms, the Bureau attempts to include them through its nonresponse follow-up operation, which is scheduled to run from May 1 through July 10. During this operation, over 600,000 enumerators are to go door-to-door collecting census information from each address from which a questionnaire was not received. Nonresponse follow- up is the most costly and labor-intensive of all census-taking operations. The Bureau expects nonresponse follow-up will cost around $2.3 billion, or around 16 percent of the decennial’s total estimated lifecycle cost of around $14.7 billion. By comparison, according to Bureau data on the 2000 nonresponse follow-up operation, labor, mileage, and certain administrative costs alone amounted to around $1.76 billion (in 2010 dollars), or about 22 percent of the total $8.15 billion (in 2010 dollars) lifecycle cost of the 2000 Census. Importantly, nonresponse follow-up is the last opportunity for people to be directly counted in the census. Those individuals who are missed by, or who do not respond to, census enumerators, are included through methods that are indirect and not as accurate. In cases of refusal, enumerators may be instructed to try to find a proxy respondent who might know something about the occupants of a household. If this is infeasible, data on the household are statistically imputed based on the demographic characteristics of surrounding housing units. This is significant for Angelenos for two reasons. First, for 2010, the mail-back response rate, used for determining the nonresponse follow-up workload, of 61.4 percent for the city of L.A. is lagging the national rate of 63.2 percent. Second, in 2000, minority groups, which comprise a large share of L.A.’s population, tended to return their questionnaires at a lower rate compared to other groups, and were more likely to be missed by the census. For example, as shown in figure 1, nationally in 2000, whites had a higher mail return rate (77.5 percent) than the rate for all groups (74.1 percent), while nearly every other race/ethnic group had lower return rates than the total mail return rate. The lowest mail return rates were those of Pacific Islander (54.6 percent) and multi-racial (57.7 percent) households. Participating in nonresponse follow-up represents an important opportunity to improve the quality of census data. Despite these elaborate efforts to obtain a complete count, some amount of error is unavoidable. However, what makes these errors particularly problematic is their differential impact on various subgroups. Minorities, renters, and children, for example, are more likely to be missed by the census while more affluent groups, such as people with vacation homes, are more likely to be included more than once. Nationally, in terms of workload (as measured by the mail-back response rate) and staffing levels, the Bureau appears to be well positioned to implement nonresponse follow-up. On both counts, the Bureau’s performance is meeting its expected goals. Nevertheless, national-level data can mask challenges occurring at the local level, and there are areas throughout the country where either the mail-back response rate or staffing levels are lagging. With respect to the mail-back response rate, the Bureau expected a level of between 59 percent and 65 percent. The actual mail-back response rate when the Bureau determined the universe of houses to visit for nonresponse follow-up on April 19, was just over 63 percent, well within its estimates. This translates into a workload of around 48 million housing units. Achieving this mail-back response rate is an important accomplishment as the nation’s population is growing steadily larger, more diverse, and according to the Bureau, increasingly difficult to find and reluctant to participate in the census. High mail-back response rates are important because they save taxpayer dollars. According to the Bureau, for every one-percentage point increase in mail response in 2010, the Bureau saves $85 million that would otherwise have been spent on nonresponse follow-up. According to the Bureau, it costs 42 cents to mail back each census form in a postage-paid envelope, compared with $57 for census takers to visit each home. Moreover, mail returns tend to have better quality data. Key factors aimed at improving the mail-back response rate included the mailing of a reminder postcard; sending a second or “replacement” questionnaire to around 30 million households in census tracts that had the lowest response rates in the 2000 Census, and 12-million replacement questionnaires to nonresponding households in other census tracts that had low-to-moderate response rates in 2000; and an aggressive marketing and outreach program. The Bureau also appears to be in good shape nationally from the perspective of enumerator staffing. In terms of recruiting, the Bureau’s goal was to recruit 3.7 million applicants to fill over 600,000 enumerator and other positions by April 25. As of April 11, the Bureau had recruited 3,717,757 applicants, or 101 percent of its target. While the Bureau appears to be well-positioned from a national perspective to carry out nonresponse follow-up, the decennial is essentially a local endeavor, where the operational environment and challenges the Bureau faces vary markedly from one locale to another. In this regard, several locations stand out. For example, the mail-back response rates in some large cities trail the 2010 national response rate of 63.2 percent, and/or the response rate they achieved during the 2000 Census. They include Detroit, New Orleans, San Antonio, and San Diego (see table 1). Likewise, there are three local census offices that have less than two qualified applicants per field position--the Bureau’s recruitment target. These offices continue their recruiting efforts, and the Bureau has plans to staff operations with recruits from neighboring local census offices, if necessary. With respect to L.A., as shown in table 2, L.A. City is trailing the state and national mail-back response rates as of April 19, 2010, as well as comparable benchmarks from the 2000 Census. In terms of recruiting, the L.A. region has met its recruiting goals. For example, the Bureau’s recruiting goal for the L.A. region was 266,370, and as of April 18, 2010, the Bureau had recruited 350,187 or 131 percent of its goal. Starting pay for enumerators, which is based on local labor markets, is $17 per hour in the L.A. area. Aside from workload and staffing, the reliability of the Bureau’s automated systems, and in particular an information technology (IT) system used for managing the Bureau’s field operations, is an open question. In earlier tests and prior activities, the operational control system did not function reliably, and the Bureau had to restrict the number of users in local census offices because of capacity limitations. The Bureau has taken steps to mitigate the risks posed by the unreliable IT systems, including upgrading hardware and software, but time will tell whether they will be able to perform as needed under full operational loads. The Constitution requires a census every 10 years in order to apportion seats in the House of Representatives. Moreover, while not required by the Constitution, states use census data to redraw the boundaries of congressional districts. Although a few missed households might not seem particularly problematic, especially in a nation of more than 300 million people, a complete count is necessary because, in some cases, small differences in population totals could potentially impact apportionment or redistricting decisions, or both. Indeed, during the 2000 Census, the last House seat could have gone to Utah rather than North Carolina if Utah’s population had around 850 more people. More broadly, census data are used to help protect our democratic system of government. For example, block-by-block census data were used in reapportioning state legislatures in the 1960s, as discussed in the Supreme Court's "one person, one vote" landmark case of Reynolds v. Sims. Further, census data are used to help ensure compliance with federal civil rights and other laws protecting our citizens. Many federal assistance programs are funded by formula grants that have historically relied, at least in part, on census and related population data to allocate funds. In our recent analysis, we found that the 10 largest federal assistance programs obligated an estimated $478 billion in fiscal year 2009 based, to some extent, on census and related population data. This amount represents about 84 percent of total federal assistance. The grants included Medicaid, Highway Planning and Construction, Head Start, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. A recent study by the Brookings Institution calculated that in fiscal year 2008, federal assistance programs distributed a total of $19.8 billion in total program expenditures, or $1,988 for each person in L.A. County. Medicaid, a joint federal-state program that finances health care for certain low-income individuals, was by far the single largest program, accounting for $14.7 billion, or around 75 percent of total expenditures. Other assistance went to programs that included transportation, education, training, employment, social services, and income security.