And Counting

Last Thursday night the census bureau called me. Needed to ask me a few questions. The woman on the phone then proceeded to ask me to verify every single piece of data that I had previously put on my census form. I laughed under my breath through the entire call.


Weeks ago we received a letter informing us that we would be receiving the census form.


We then received a postcard stating that our census form was on the way.


Then came the actual form.


Within a few days we received more correspondence reminding us to make sure and send back in our form.


I sent the form back in.


Then came the phone call.

Now, I have no problem with the government getting a good head count. But is this not overkill? I looked all over for some statistics to try and quantify this. Here is the best I could come up with. The government is hiring 635,000 census workers, to count 300,00,000. That's a worker hired to count 472 people. Or how about this: the census cost a little more than 60 cents per person in 1950 ($91.4 million). It is projected to cost nearly $47 per person in 2010 ($14.5 billion). That’s a whopping 7822% increase in cost per person. During the same time, the population rose by 100% (i.e., doubled) from 150 million to over 300 million. But the overall cost of counting it (the census) rose by 15,800%. When did counting become so costly?

Here is my idea. Mail everyone the census. In the packet promise to give every household who fills it out and turns it in $20. Now, all that is left is to find the few people who didn't do it. And you have more than half your budget to do it.