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If this is true of the U.S. Census it would imply that congressional apportionment is biased against rural areas. So the question has a strong political valance

If this is true of the U.S. Census it would imply that congressional apportionment is biased against rural areas. So the question has a strong political valance and neutrality is not to be expected.

aoki 2y ago
It’s not. A census literally counts every individual. Census public reports are aggregated for privacy. This is about spatial disaggregation of aggregated census data. The problem in developing countries (which is what these datasets are used for) is that they often fail to run a complete census (in some cases, for many decades) because it is expensive and/or the government is not functional. So these datasets may not be well-calibrated overall. The US has no problem running a decennial census, aside from nonresponse by immigrants, conspiracy theory enjoyers, etc.
- mootothemax 2y ago
  >A census literally counts every individual. I'm afraid that this isn't the case; a census is a best-efforts estimate. There are plenty of people missed for a variety of reason, everything from not wanting to be found, through to simple avoidance. Let alone filling out the forms incorrectly or giving dud answers to the army of amazing people trying to make sense of all the madness. Edit: realising the above has added to a long list of things that once upon a time I thought were hard-set facts, and nowadays I'm slowly losing my mind over. Coordinates, populated place boundaries, census counts + demographics... I mean, what _is_ an address? Incredibly painful to get to the bottom of that one, at least in the UK where the definition of an address will vary significantly by use case screams into the void
- InitialLastName 2y ago
  > A census literally counts every individual. Census public reports are aggregated for privacy. Is there any evidence of how accurately the US census actually does that job? Having spoken with a number of people who were involved with the 2020 census (mostly on a volunteer, local basis) the answer is not "absolutely every person in the country got counted exactly once". There are a number of sources of error that would seem essentially impossible to fully remediate, due to people being complicated and error-prone and the census being largely self-reported: - People in multiple households being counted twice, e.g. college students being counted both at college and at home. - People who refuse to participate (one of the census-takers I know had someone wave a gun at her face when she tried to follow up on their household's non-response). - People who are transient or disconnected enough from the social fabric that they are hard to maintain consistent contact with. I knew someone involved with taking the census for an urban unhoused population and there was no doubt that they both missed and double-counted people; I'm sure it's even more difficult for rural populations that might be even less connected and even more transient. It's not hard to imagine that, on net and despite there being rules and processes for handling each of those situations, there ends up being regional and/or urban/rural bias in the final counts.
  - mootothemax 2y ago
    > Having spoken with a number of people who were involved with the 2020 census (mostly on a volunteer, local basis) the answer is not "absolutely every person in the country got counted exactly once". Do you have any thoughts on how the US census takes your insightful comment's points into account? I imagine it's got to be quite an involved process given the vast differences in US geography, kinda blows my mind thinking about even basic stuff like age demographics vs. taking into account how many people died on census day. But then - maybe that's too granular and it all balances out in the end? Or at least, it does if you use special magic sauce the US census has covered?
  - DennisP 2y ago
    US rural people tend to trust the government less, so I could definitely see them getting undercounted. The census should really have an option for refusers that collects an absolute minimum of information. The Constitution only asks that people be counted, not that they be broken down into categories. At least it's just the short form now. Prior to 2010, one out of six people got the long form, which had ten pages of questions for each person in the household. Here's a pdf: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/decennial/technical-documentation/questionnaires/2000_long_form.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/d...
    - Braxton1980 2y ago
      I believe the long form survey you are talking about is the acs survey If you receive it you are legally required to respond. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/top-questions-about-the-survey.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/top-questi... Considering cenus data is used to determine representation numbers just counting people could lead inflated numbers if that information can't be verified.
      - DennisP 2y ago
        It used to be a "long form" every ten years, now it's the ACS every year.[1] I didn't realize until now that they'd continued the long form in another, um, form. Technically you're required to respond, with a fine of $100 per question if you don't (with 50 questions). However, in the past half century the government has not prosecuted or fined anyone for failing to respond.[2] [1] https://www.prb.org/resources/continuity-and-change-in-the-u-s-decennial-census/ https://www.prb.org/resources/continuity-and-change-in-the-u... [2] https://www.easidemographics.com/web/do-i-have-to-complete-the-american-community-survey-acs https://www.easidemographics.com/web/do-i-have-to-complete-t...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  A census worker wasn't able to get in contact with the people who lived across the street from me. They suddenly moved out one weekend during the first summer of the pandemic and never came back, leaving the house vacant. I didn't know them very well, but the census worker asked me to make my best guess about the ages of each of the adult and child who had lived there. Did that cause a double count due to them being counted wherever they moved to? Were my guesses correct? Or correct enough? No idea but that's the data the census worker recorded.
  - senkora 2y ago
    The census has an official date to avoid issues like this. Since they lived at the house across the street from you on the official census date of April 1st 2020, the census worker was correct to record them at that address. They would only have been double counted if they incorrectly reported living at their new address as of April 1st.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ericmcer 2y ago
  There is just no way they count every individual. I live in California and was visiting someone in the central valley. For fun I drove some back dirt roads into some hills and there was a small corrugated sheet metal building style settlement with 20ish people hanging around it a ways back in. It really made me wonder how many people are tucked away. Not like a 24 year old kid who gets a college degree and intentionally lives off grid, but poor/uneducated people who eke out a living somewhere off the beaten path.
chris_va 2y ago
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-undercount-overcount-rates-by-state.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-u...
tdb7893 2y ago
Are the datasets in the study calculated the same way as the census? It looks to be satellite data and remote sensing (which I'm not aware of the census using) so this doesn't seem to imply anything about the census
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
It would have to be quite a large bias to overcome the bias of the Senate
- tshaddox 2y ago
  That's only relevant when comparing states with low populations and states with high populations, which is related but not quite the same as biasing rural populations over urban populations. California has way more rural population than Vermont, but Vermont voters are vastly overrepresented in the Senate (and the electoral college). The bias towards urban populations would be more significant in congressional districts within a state, I reckon.
asadotzler 2y ago
Rural Mississippi (O Brother, Where Art Though) Delmar with companions: "You Wash's boy?" Child with long gun: "Yessir and Daddy told me I'm to shoot whoever's from the bank." Delmar: "Well, we ain't from no bank, young feller." Child: "I'm also suppose to shoot folks servin' papers!" Delmar: "Well we ain't got no papers" Child: "I nicked the census man." Delmar: "Now there's a good boy"
spookie 2y ago
Well, this is the case in a lot of countries. On my home country each "state" has a number of representatives according to their population, and just the population. This has slowly but surely made it so laws are more and more biased towards metropolitan areas. From someone raised in a rural area it's mind boggling how far this has gotten. I guess this paper adds salt to injury.
- newAccount2025 2y ago
  Why should laws favor rural regions instead of people?
  - spookie 2y ago
    I understand that, and the fact that basing yourself on population alone is simple and easy to understand. But, your rural areas may be over half of your territory. People living there also matter, and the needs of those territories are very different. Just to bring an example of how the current system backfires: - we need railroads to reopen so we are able to sell produce to our own industry base competitevely - we are always told there aren't enough people here, so no railroads. Even though, the primary objective of those wouldn't be to transport people - we sell our produce to the neighbouring country instead, given it is closer than our own country's industrial hotspots. By selling off raw produce, our country will end up earning less than if it were processed by our own food industry. - without much economic incentive to remain living there, many will emigrate. - less people = even less representative power. The cycle continues... Now, I don't have a solution. It is a difficult problem to solve. One could be to have a higher minimum number of representatives per region, as the lowest populated region only elects 2, 24 times less than the highest populated one. And, just to show how different the political landscape is when compared to the US: the metropolitan regions have voted way more to the far right and far left parties than the rural regions have, which have led to a lot of divisive political outcomes.
- switchbak 2y ago
  Salt to injury? I give you props for a nicely mixed metaphor there.

If this is true of the U.S. Census it would imply that congressional apportionment is biased against rural areas. So the question has a strong political valance and neutrality is not to be expected.

aoki 2y ago

It’s not. A census literally counts every individual. Census public reports are aggregated for privacy. This is about spatial disaggregation of aggregated census data. The problem in developing countries (which is what these datasets are used for) is that they often fail to run a complete census (in some cases, for many decades) because it is expensive and/or the government is not functional. So these datasets may not be well-calibrated overall. The US has no problem running a decennial census, aside from nonresponse by immigrants, conspiracy theory enjoyers, etc.

mootothemax 2y ago
>A census literally counts every individual. I'm afraid that this isn't the case; a census is a best-efforts estimate. There are plenty of people missed for a variety of reason, everything from not wanting to be found, through to simple avoidance. Let alone filling out the forms incorrectly or giving dud answers to the army of amazing people trying to make sense of all the madness. Edit: realising the above has added to a long list of things that once upon a time I thought were hard-set facts, and nowadays I'm slowly losing my mind over. Coordinates, populated place boundaries, census counts + demographics... I mean, what _is_ an address? Incredibly painful to get to the bottom of that one, at least in the UK where the definition of an address will vary significantly by use case screams into the void
InitialLastName 2y ago
> A census literally counts every individual. Census public reports are aggregated for privacy. Is there any evidence of how accurately the US census actually does that job? Having spoken with a number of people who were involved with the 2020 census (mostly on a volunteer, local basis) the answer is not "absolutely every person in the country got counted exactly once". There are a number of sources of error that would seem essentially impossible to fully remediate, due to people being complicated and error-prone and the census being largely self-reported: - People in multiple households being counted twice, e.g. college students being counted both at college and at home. - People who refuse to participate (one of the census-takers I know had someone wave a gun at her face when she tried to follow up on their household's non-response). - People who are transient or disconnected enough from the social fabric that they are hard to maintain consistent contact with. I knew someone involved with taking the census for an urban unhoused population and there was no doubt that they both missed and double-counted people; I'm sure it's even more difficult for rural populations that might be even less connected and even more transient. It's not hard to imagine that, on net and despite there being rules and processes for handling each of those situations, there ends up being regional and/or urban/rural bias in the final counts.
- mootothemax 2y ago
  > Having spoken with a number of people who were involved with the 2020 census (mostly on a volunteer, local basis) the answer is not "absolutely every person in the country got counted exactly once". Do you have any thoughts on how the US census takes your insightful comment's points into account? I imagine it's got to be quite an involved process given the vast differences in US geography, kinda blows my mind thinking about even basic stuff like age demographics vs. taking into account how many people died on census day. But then - maybe that's too granular and it all balances out in the end? Or at least, it does if you use special magic sauce the US census has covered?
- DennisP 2y ago
  US rural people tend to trust the government less, so I could definitely see them getting undercounted. The census should really have an option for refusers that collects an absolute minimum of information. The Constitution only asks that people be counted, not that they be broken down into categories. At least it's just the short form now. Prior to 2010, one out of six people got the long form, which had ten pages of questions for each person in the household. Here's a pdf: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/decennial/technical-documentation/questionnaires/2000_long_form.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/d...
  - Braxton1980 2y ago
    I believe the long form survey you are talking about is the acs survey If you receive it you are legally required to respond. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/top-questions-about-the-survey.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/top-questi... Considering cenus data is used to determine representation numbers just counting people could lead inflated numbers if that information can't be verified.
    - DennisP 2y ago
      It used to be a "long form" every ten years, now it's the ACS every year.[1] I didn't realize until now that they'd continued the long form in another, um, form. Technically you're required to respond, with a fine of $100 per question if you don't (with 50 questions). However, in the past half century the government has not prosecuted or fined anyone for failing to respond.[2] [1] https://www.prb.org/resources/continuity-and-change-in-the-u-s-decennial-census/ https://www.prb.org/resources/continuity-and-change-in-the-u... [2] https://www.easidemographics.com/web/do-i-have-to-complete-the-american-community-survey-acs https://www.easidemographics.com/web/do-i-have-to-complete-t...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
A census worker wasn't able to get in contact with the people who lived across the street from me. They suddenly moved out one weekend during the first summer of the pandemic and never came back, leaving the house vacant. I didn't know them very well, but the census worker asked me to make my best guess about the ages of each of the adult and child who had lived there. Did that cause a double count due to them being counted wherever they moved to? Were my guesses correct? Or correct enough? No idea but that's the data the census worker recorded.
- senkora 2y ago
  The census has an official date to avoid issues like this. Since they lived at the house across the street from you on the official census date of April 1st 2020, the census worker was correct to record them at that address. They would only have been double counted if they incorrectly reported living at their new address as of April 1st.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ericmcer 2y ago
There is just no way they count every individual. I live in California and was visiting someone in the central valley. For fun I drove some back dirt roads into some hills and there was a small corrugated sheet metal building style settlement with 20ish people hanging around it a ways back in. It really made me wonder how many people are tucked away. Not like a 24 year old kid who gets a college degree and intentionally lives off grid, but poor/uneducated people who eke out a living somewhere off the beaten path.

chris_va 2y ago

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-undercount-overcount-rates-by-state.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-u...

tdb7893 2y ago

Are the datasets in the study calculated the same way as the census? It looks to be satellite data and remote sensing (which I'm not aware of the census using) so this doesn't seem to imply anything about the census

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

It would have to be quite a large bias to overcome the bias of the Senate

tshaddox 2y ago
That's only relevant when comparing states with low populations and states with high populations, which is related but not quite the same as biasing rural populations over urban populations. California has way more rural population than Vermont, but Vermont voters are vastly overrepresented in the Senate (and the electoral college). The bias towards urban populations would be more significant in congressional districts within a state, I reckon.

asadotzler 2y ago

Rural Mississippi (O Brother, Where Art Though) Delmar with companions: "You Wash's boy?" Child with long gun: "Yessir and Daddy told me I'm to shoot whoever's from the bank." Delmar: "Well, we ain't from no bank, young feller." Child: "I'm also suppose to shoot folks servin' papers!" Delmar: "Well we ain't got no papers" Child: "I nicked the census man." Delmar: "Now there's a good boy"

spookie 2y ago

Well, this is the case in a lot of countries. On my home country each "state" has a number of representatives according to their population, and just the population. This has slowly but surely made it so laws are more and more biased towards metropolitan areas. From someone raised in a rural area it's mind boggling how far this has gotten. I guess this paper adds salt to injury.

newAccount2025 2y ago
Why should laws favor rural regions instead of people?
- spookie 2y ago
  I understand that, and the fact that basing yourself on population alone is simple and easy to understand. But, your rural areas may be over half of your territory. People living there also matter, and the needs of those territories are very different. Just to bring an example of how the current system backfires: - we need railroads to reopen so we are able to sell produce to our own industry base competitevely - we are always told there aren't enough people here, so no railroads. Even though, the primary objective of those wouldn't be to transport people - we sell our produce to the neighbouring country instead, given it is closer than our own country's industrial hotspots. By selling off raw produce, our country will end up earning less than if it were processed by our own food industry. - without much economic incentive to remain living there, many will emigrate. - less people = even less representative power. The cycle continues... Now, I don't have a solution. It is a difficult problem to solve. One could be to have a higher minimum number of representatives per region, as the lowest populated region only elects 2, 24 times less than the highest populated one. And, just to show how different the political landscape is when compared to the US: the metropolitan regions have voted way more to the far right and far left parties than the rural regions have, which have led to a lot of divisive political outcomes.
switchbak 2y ago
Salt to injury? I give you props for a nicely mixed metaphor there.