Thousands of Coast residents haven’t filled out the Census form. Here’s why you should.
Thousands of South Mississippi residents have some unfinished business with the federal government: the 2020 census.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows 62.1 percent of residents in Jackson County have responded to a mailed request earlier this year for basic demographic information. That’s the highest response rate of the three Coast counties.
Harrison County is second, with a rate of 60.3 percent. Hancock County’s response rate is 54.3 percent.
The first census results are due to the president by the end of the year. A lot is riding on the numbers.
The results determine the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives. They are also used to draw congressional and state legislative districts.
And big bucks are tied to the data. The results will guide how much federal money is spent to programs such as Medicaid, Head Start and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP.
Over the next decade, lawmakers, business owners and others will use census data to make critical decisions. The results will show where communities need new schools, new clinics, new roads, and more services for families, older adults and children.
The census bureau has asked residents to respond by computer, phone or the U.S. mail to questions such as the number of people living in their household, and their age, race, gender and relationship. This month, census workers resumed an outreach effort in certain parts of the Coast to encourage people to respond to the decennial census, held every 10 years.
John J. Green, who heads the Center for Population Studies at the University of Mississippi, said the Coast response rates are “fairly positive, although we want to drive those numbers up.” He said the state’s response rate sits at 55.5 percent.
Jase Payne, who works with The Focus Group, a firm hired by the state to help with the census, said the state’s best response rates have come from the Coast, the greater Jackson area and DeSoto County, which straddles the Tennessee border.
He said Mississippi has seen a plateau in the number of people responding through the internet, and now officials are seeing more people answer by phone. He said Mississippi is 50th among the states in people responding to the census via computer.
Wisconsin has the nation’s three highest response rates by county, at around 81 percent. See more census response data here.