2010 Census stats

The U.S. Census bureau is in the midsts of what it calls the “nation’s largest domestic mobilization” to count the U.S. population. As you may have heard by now, the census will determine state and federal legislative district boundaries, and how much money states and cities may receive from the federal government.

Census officials say they will periodically update the effort with a statistical summary of the effort. Following are a few of the stats the bureau recently released.

• More than $400 billion: Amount in federal funds distributed each year to states and communities based in part on census population data.

• 435: Number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to be apportioned according to the 2010 Census. Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires a census once a decade.

• 10: It takes just 10 minutes for the average household to complete 10 simple questions. The census form is one of the shortest in history, asking households to provide the names of residents and their sex, age and date of birth, race, whether of Hispanic origin, relationship to householder, whether the home is owned or rented and telephone number.

• 134 million: Estimated number of housing units the Census Bureau contacts, either by mail or in person, to conduct the 2010 Census.

• 360 million: Total number of questionnaires that have been printed. Stacked one on top of another, a pile of these forms would stand about 29 miles high — more than five times higher than Mount Everest.

• 11.6 million pounds: Collective weight of the paper the questionnaires were printed on. The printing of these questionnaires required 295,259 pounds of ink. The questionnaires printed, which fill nearly 425 tractor-trailers, would circle the globe three times if stretched end to end.

• 3.8 million: Total number of people recruited for 2010 Census operations during fiscal years 2009 and 2010 (as of March 1). This includes almost 1.2 million people recruited for address canvassing last year.

• 1.2 million: Number of field positions needed to conduct census operations this year.

• 28: Number of languages census advertisements will appear in. This is up from 17 in 2000. The 2010 Census advertising campaign represents the most diverse outreach campaign in U.S. history. No other campaign has gone so deep into the Asian market, with advertising in 13 languages (Chinese-Mandarin, Chinese-Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hindi, Tagalog, Japanese, Khmer, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Hindi and Bengali).

• $133 million: Cost of the national advertising campaign to boost participation rates in the 2010 Census.

• 72: Number of years individual census records are kept before they are made public by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Shortly after the census is completed, the Census Bureau turns over the images of the questionnaires to NARA, which in turn keeps them secure for the next seven-plus decades. In 2012, individual records from the 1940 Census will be made available to the public for the first time for genealogical research.