Big cities lag behind in Census
Mass. almost up to 2010 percentage
Big cities in Massachusetts are lagging behind the rest of the state in filling out the Census, as a small army of census-takers prepare to hit the streets.
So far, 64.4% of households have responded without any intervention from census workers, said Jeff Behler, regional director for the U.S. Census Bureau.
While that percentage may seem low, he said, households have until Oct. 31 to respond, and this year’s participation rate already is close to the 68.8% who responded by the end of the 2010 Census.
“That’s amazing, especially given that Massachusetts shut down before many other states because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Behler said. “The work Massachusetts has done in terms of educating communities and building trust so that people would respond on their own has paid off.”
The lowest response rates among the largest cities are 48.8% in Lawrence, 48.9% in Chelsea, 50.3% in Everett, 52% in Worcester, and 52.6% in Boston, he said.
Urban areas often have the lowest rates of participation in the Census, Behler said, because of a lack of understanding about it and a fear of the government, even though Title XIII, a law that was passed in 1954, expressly prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing any information about a specific individual or household.
In the coming weeks, more than 8,000 census workers fluent in the languages of people who haven’t responded yet will knock on their doors to try to convince them of the importance of being counted, Behler said.
The U.S. Census is done every 10 years and is used to determine everything from the number of seats states will have in Congress to the amount of federal funding they will receive for schools, Head Start, Pell Grants for college, Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, and roads and bridges, among many other things.
“There’s a lot riding on making sure we have a complete and accurate count of not only the residents of Springfield but everyone in Massachusetts,” said Gladys
Oyola, co-chair of the Complete Count Committee in Springfield, which so far has a 56% response rate. “It impacts the most-vulnerable communities the greatest.”
Boston’s demographic makes it harder to achieve an accurate count when compared to other municipalities for a few reasons, city officials said. The city is extremely diverse, with 28% of the population being foreign-born and 37% of residents speaking a language other than English at home.
Sixty-six percent of Bostonians rent and tend to be more transient than homeowners, officials said. And the city has about 150,000 college students, with more than 30,000 living off campus.
Boston has sent postage letters, texts and robo-calls to more than 50,000 public school families, more than 70,000 seniors, and other residents to encourage participation, officials said.