My Two Census

The 2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour is launching in New York City today, and we have a few updates on the tour:

There will be one national vehicle and 13 smaller regional vehicles. The national vehicle, which will be unveiled today in Times Square, is a 46-foot gooseneck trailer towed by a dual axle, quad-cab pick-up truck. It’s expected to visit high-profile events nationwide.

The regional vehicles are sprinter cargo vans towing 14-foot bumper pull trailers. They’ll be at a variety of events in their areas.

The vehicles, which the Census Bureau has named, are equipped with GPS technology to track their progress online. Each vehicle also has it’s own Twitter feed.

After the jump, see the full list of regional vehicles, Twitter feeds and locations the national vehicle is slated to visit.

(more…)

Watch out world, Philly’s on the rise…this after Boston’s challenge of Census Bureau estimates was recently approved…From Philly.com:

Good news, Philadelphia!

After decades of population loss, the city has stopped shrinking, according to revised Census Bureau estimates delivered to the city earlier this week.

On Monday, the city received a letter from the Census Bureau raising the 2008 population estimate by about 93,000.

In October, Philly challenged the bureau’s 2008 estimate of the city’s population, which the bureau had set at 1,447,395. It was the first time that the city had challenged the bureau’s estimates since a challenge program began earlier this decade.

The new estimate of Philadelphia’s ’08 population is 1,540,351 people, 4,220 higher than what even the city had believed. The difference came from the bureau’s having more accurate counts of those living in prisons, nursing homes and college dorms, said Gary Jastrzab, the city’s deputy director of city planning.

The city’s population peaked at more than two million people in 1950, then began a 50-year decline.

“For the first time in nearly 60 years, we can demonstrate that Philadelphia’s population is growing, not declining,” Mayor Nutter said.

He said that the new estimates highlighted the importance of the 2010 Census, which will have legislative and fiscal ramifications for the city.

“City, state, and federal [representation] are all affected by the census figures because of required redistricting,” he said.

The city would get more funding from the federal government if it could prove it was growing, Nutter said.

Problem 3: In its hiring practices, the Census Bureau discriminates against people who live in certain areas, particularly within urban municipalities.

There is an applicant for a census job whom we will call Jane. Jane lives in San Francisco and speaks English, Spanish, and French fluently. She is 30 years old, has a Ph.D. in Demography from Princeton, the ability to work 40 hours per week, a perfect score on the census test, and no criminal record. However, the Census Bureau did not hire her.

Why? Jane lives in Inner Richmond, a neighborhood that has a large Mandarin-speaking population. Her other qualifications are outweighed by the Census Bureau’s computer database by the fact that she doesn’t speak Mandarin. Even worse, even though she lives just three miles from The Mission, a neighborhood where Spanish is the predominant language, there is another applicant with a lower test score, who hasn’t even graduated from high school, who lives within the borders of The Mission and will get the job instead of Jane.

In San Francisco, a less qualified applicant who lives within a neighborhood boundary would be hired instead of someone who is much more qualified who lives a mere three miles away.. Differences of a few miles should not be factored in to the hiring process, as Census Bureau employees in rural areas are asked to commute dozens of miles to and from work.

By not hiring individuals who have the best test scores and other qualifications, the Census Bureau fails to hire the most qualified applicants; those can likely provide the most accurate decennial headcount.