Experts: Asian population census overcount masks community nuances
PHOENIX (AP) — Jennifer Chau was astonished last month when the U.S. Census Bureau’s report card on how accurately it counted the U.S. population in 2020 showed that Asian people were overcounted by the highest rate of any race or ethnic group.
The director of an Asian American advocacy group thought thousands of people would be missed — outreach activities had been scratched by the coronavirus pandemic, and she and her staff feared widespread language barriers and wariness of sharing information with the government could hinder participation. They also thought recent attacks against Asian Americans could stir up fears within the Asian population, the fastest-growing race or ethnic group in the U.S.
“I’m honestly shocked,” said Chau, director of the Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander For Equity Coalition.
But Chau and other advocates and academics also believe the overcounting of the Asian population by 2.6% in the once-a-decade U.S. head count may not be all that it seems on the surface. They say it likely masks great variation in who was counted among different Asian communities in the U.S. They also believe it could signal that biracial and multiracial residents identified as Asian in larger numbers than in the past.
The specifics are difficult to determine because all Asian communities are grouped together under the same race category in the census. This conceals the wide variety of income, education and health backgrounds between subgroups and tends to blur characteristics unique to certain communities, some advocates said. It may also perpetuate the “model minority” myth of Asians being affluent and well-educated.
“Asian Americans have the largest income inequality than any other racial groups in the U.S. and the overall overcount likely masks the experiences of Asian ethnic groups who were more vulnerable to being undercounted,” said Aggie Yellow Horse, an assistant professor of Asian Pacific American Studies at Arizona State University.
Almost four dozen U.S. House members this month asked the Census Bureau to break down the accuracy of the count of Asian residents by subgroups. Asians in the U.S. trace their roots to more than 20 countries, with China and India having the largest representation. But the bureau has no plans to do so, at least not in the immediate future.
“To really see how the Asian American community fared, you need lower level geography to understand if there was an undercount or if certain communities
fared better than others,” said Terry Ao Minnis, senior director of census and voting programs at Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
Asians were overcounted by a higher rate than any other group. White residents were overcounted by 0.6%, and white residents who aren’t Hispanic were overcounted by 1.6%. The Black population was undercounted by 3.3%, those who identified as some other race had a 4.3% undercount, almost 5% of the Hispanic population was missed and more than 5.6% of American Indians living on reservations were undercounted.
Civil rights leaders blamed the undercounts on hurdles created by the pandemic and political interference by then-President Donald Trump’s administration, which tried unsuccessfully to add a citizenship question to the census form and cut field operations short.
The census not only is used for determining how
many congressional seats each state gets and for redrawing political districts; it helps determine how $1.5 trillion a year in federal funding is allocated. Overcounts, which are revealed through a survey the bureau conducts apart from the census, occur when people are counted twice, such as college students being counted on campus and at their parents’ homes.
In the 2020 census, 19.9 million residents identified as “Asian alone,” a 35% increase from 2010. Another 4.1 million residents identified as Asian in combination with another race group, a 55% jump from 2010. Asians now make up more than 7% of the U.S. population.
Some of the growth by Asians in the 2020 census may be rooted in the fluidity of how some people, particularly those who are biracial or multiracial, report their identity on the census form, said Paul Ong, a professor emeritus of urban planning and Asian American Studies at UCLA.