Consequences of Inaccurate Census - Essay Sample

Introduction

The decennial census is one of the most powerful American institution mandated by law to establish national statistics after ten years. The role of these data is to provide an overview of America's demographic and geographic characteristics (Cohn). The institution not only establishes human headcount, but rather other fundamental information such as level of education, poverty index, racial distribution, family composition, health access and level of income. The next American census is to be conducted in 2020 with many reforms. The decennial census is expected to feature a dialog asking for U.S citizenship (Cohn). The Census data provides the baseline for the government to establish the distribution of individuals with each of those characteristics mentioned above across the states and the entire census frame-work. The report from the national bureau of statistics is important in national planning, resource allocation and apportion of U.S congress seats to the states. The effectiveness of these government initiatives is dependent on the authenticity of the decennial census report.

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The plan by the government to include the U.S citizenship question has been predicted to flaw the entire process as immigrants from the majority of the states might shy away from this exercise in doubt of the government taking legal action against them. This will greatly harm the accuracy of the exercise leading to the inaccurate census (Cohn). However, there are other causes of inaccurate census such as poor planning and execution either due to inadequate funding and deceptive citizens. The implications of a skewed census have been covered in depth below. The obvious indirect effect is the loss of taxpayer's money by undertaking a flawed exercise. The government allocates a huge sum of money to the Census Bureau to plan and carry out this exercise. It is unfortunate wasting these amounts in an activity that leads to the acquisition of wrong data which eventually misleads the government in service delivery through the subsequent ten years. Besides the loss of revenue, inaccurate census leads to disproportionate allocation of funds from the federal to states local government.

These allocations are meant to fund the education sector, health and medical aid, roads and transport, housing developments, law enforcement and more. The government applies the census as a baseline to formulate criteria on resource distribution relating to geographical size, education level, personal income, level of poverty and race. It will adversely impact areas constituted of many immigrants, i.e., California. The social welfare of many states and cities will be grossly affected due to underfunding from the federal and eventually leading to reduced economic development. More so, these local governments utilize the census data to formulate their expenditure policies such as planning, infrastructure development, research and provision of essential facilities. The Federal and the local governments will deliver services blindly for the next ten years adversely affecting national and regional growth. In planning, the Census is used to identify possibly marginalized regions to pin out specific areas where special tax treatment need to apply, and facilitate prioritization in their development (Roos). The community organizations in local governments that rely on this information to come up with social service programs such as elderly care centers, child care centers, fire departments, and community projects won't be able to implement these sufficiently leading to societal gaps.

Hurting the health care and social science research will lead to widening health disparity (Cohn). This will strangle the government efforts in implementing health access to all. The Federal government departments are also the victims of a skewed Census report. The scores of these departments are usually factored in Census activity to determine their effectiveness in service delivery. These departments judge their level of progress, areas they need to improve on by basing on the prompt responses from the population. Consequently, businesses will be curtailed too since retailers, commercial banks, real estate ventures and investors rely on census report to identify a business opportunity, existing market gaps and potential market niches for their products. Additionally, these data are crucial for them in drafting business plans and evaluating the viability of undertaking a business investment in specific regions with specific demographic constitutions (Roos).

Finally, the greatest impact of the inaccurate census is under-representation of states. The population of a given state defines the number of congressional slots allocated to them (Cohn). Inaccurate reports such as overpopulating a region while under populating another means more representative seats will be given to undeserving state at the expense of the other more deserving state. Furthermore, these states rely on their population data while selecting members into law making bodies. The overall effect of misrepresentation is bestowment of disproportionate states power, and distortion in the implementation of social and economic policies as the over-represented states dictate more power over the others.

Conclusion

In conclusion, inaccurate census data is detrimental to both the local and national governments. This paper has dwelt on the cause of inaccurate census due to the failure of immigrants to participate in the activity as a result of the mandatory U. S Citizenship question in the coming 2020 census. California which harbors many immigrants will be the most affected state in terms of congress representation and economic development. Not only is California be affected but both the Federal and other state governments. Therefore, it's important for the government to find a more convenient way to address the matter.

Works Cited

Cohn, D'vera. "The Citizenship Question Planned For 2020 Census: What To Know." Pew Research Center. N.p., 2019. Web. 3 Mar. 2019.

Roos, Dave. "How The Census Works." HowStuffWorks. N.p., 2018. Web. 3 Mar. 2019.