Patterns of Differential Undercount among Farmworkers, Indigenous-Origin, and Recent Mexican Immigrants in Census 2010

Differential undercount in the decennial census is a crucial issue affecting social justice in that funding for a wide range of education, housing, and public health programs is based on allocation formulas based on census data. But, unfortunately, the same socioeconomic and cultural factors affecting need for interventions are those associated with differential undercount. We examine undercount in the 2010 Decennial Census among Latino immigrants in rural California counties with concentrations of migrant and seasonal farmworkers, a population believed to experience a “mega-undercount” in the range of 30-50%. Based on an in-person post-censal survey of more than 800 households we will estimate undercount among vulnerable sub-populations including indigenous-origin farmworkers, households without mail delivery, and linguistically isolated households. Our presentation, in addition to describing patterns of undercount among vulnerable immigrant groups, will assess the efficacy of strategic efforts to improve enumeration. The Census Bureau has made special efforts to enhance enumeration in hard-to-count areas as well as targeted efforts to enhance enumeration of farmworkers . Also, it has undertaken to mail bilingual English-Spanish questionnaires to neighborhoods believed to have high proportions of limited-English households. However, widespread anti-immigrant hostility, increasing language diversity among the indigenous farmworkers, more crowded housing as a result of the economic downturn, and problems with the Bureau's Master Address File make it unclear whether enumeration will be significantly improved or not. The findings will be particularly relevant to the language access requirements governing community health clinics' provision of health care in areas with high concentrations of language minorities.