Collecting Reliable, Timely and Local Census Data

The Director of the Census, John H. Thompson was asked about the challenges to survey data collection, the availability of the data and the impacts to the American Community Survey... What would happen to the survey if it were not mandated by law... Research shows that a voluntary survey would reduce the self-response rates significantly. To make up the shortfall, Census would have to increase the number of households surveyed and conduct much more in-person follow-up, at an additional cost of more than $90 million annually. If Census weren’t able to increase the number of households surveyed it would collect much less data and accuracy would decrease due to increased sampling variation. This would disproportionately affect the accuracy of the results that we produce for many small areas and small population groups.