Citizenship question or not, worry persists in Georgia of census undercount of minorities

The potential addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 census, not happening for now, might have had a greater effect in Georgia than some of its neighboring states.

The conversations around the proposed addition, struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, still might have an effect on whether Hispanic/Latino people will respond to next year’s census.

The ruling sends the case back to a federal district court in New York for further consideration, but it leaves the Trump administration little time to make a new case for the citizenship question because the government must soon begin printing materials to carry out the decennial census.

Census changes coupled with the political discourse around immigration and the inclusion of a citizenship question could further compound the issue of under-representation of minority groups in the state, resulting in more than 177,000 being left off the census counts, according to an Urban Institute study.

Census data determines how much states get from the federal government for programs like Medicaid, Pell Grants, school breakfasts and Section 8 housing. It also determines how many seats the state gets in the House of Representatives.

According to the George Washington Institute of Public Policy, the census helped drive $23.8 billion in federal funding to Georgia in 2016, about $2,314 per resident. A majority of those funds were spent on Medicaid but Federal Direct Student Loans and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) also received a chunk of the funding.

According to the latest census estimates, which cover the period between 2013 and 2017:

▪ In Muscogee County, only about 2.9% (5,704) of its residents are not citizens. That figure is even lower in Macon-Bibb County where about 1.7% (2,666) of its residents are not citizens.

▪ In Georgia, 5.9% of the state’s population is made up of non-citizens — putting them ahead of most neighboring southern states but behind places like Florida, Illinois, Texas, California, Washington and New York among others.

▪ Nationwide, about 22.3 million people, or 7% of the U.S. population, are not U.S. citizens.

The census estimates come from the American Community Survey, or ACS, which the census bureau sends out every year to more than 3 million households. The ACS asks a wide variety of questions, including a question about citizenship. About one in 12 foreign-born respondents nationwide filled out part of the ACS in 2017 but didn’t answer the citizenship question.

Among those in Georgia who supported the addition of a citizenship question is Gov. Brian Kemp. Kemp, in a Facebook post in March 2018, said that he supported the effort.

“This data will benefit states’ administration of elections and bolster the Department of Justice’s enforcement of federal voting rights laws, ultimately ensuring that each American citizen’s vote counts,” Kemp wrote.

Diana Elliott, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, said Georgia’s black and Hispanic/Latino populations are at the greatest risk for being undercounted. Citing data from the Institute, Elliot said roughly 69,200 Georgians could be undercounted in 2020 under a best-case scenario assuming census officials do as well as they did in 2010.

If things go much worse — less than 60% of households self-respond and some Hispanic/Latino residents and immigrants choose not to respond because of the political discourse around immigration and the citizenship question — about 177,000 people could be undercounted.

That estimate also takes into account operational changes to the 2020 census including the ability for Americans to complete the census online and fewer attempts to reach people who don’t respond, Elliott said.

While white populations are projected to be overcounted, the state’s Hispanic/Latino population could be undercounted by about 2% to 3.7% — or by 22,500 to 39,700 people.

“Based on Census Bureau’s own research, we believe that whether or not the citizenship question is on the census form, that there will be a chill and a suppression of people who are immigrants and people who are Hispanic/Latino,” Elliott said. “It’s going to have more of an impact in some communities than others.”

The state’s black population is at the highest risk of being undercounted, according to Urban Institute data. Estimates state the black population could be undercounted by 2.4% to 3.8% — or 87,000 people to 136,600 people. Elliott called it a “big proportion.”

“We know that historically the Black population is missed at higher rates than other populations,” Elliott said. “When you think about the fact they could be in communities living together, whole communities could miss out on their fair share of funding.”

The state’s youngest residents could be greatly affected as well. Children ages zero to 4 are at risk to be undercounted by about 5% to 6.7% — or 34,440 to 46,400 people.

“That has a very real impact for their funding for the next 10 years,” she said. “Let’s say you have a 2-year-old who is missed. By the time the next census rolls around, they’re age 12. They are already well into their school years, and their community will have missed out on that funding.”

Things could change, Elliott said. Community engagement and outreach efforts to ensure people that the Census keeps the data given to them confidential is key.

“It will take a lot of effort at the community level to communicate that and get people to realize how important it is to fill them out,” she said. “This can turn around. We can get more people to complete the census.”

This story was originally published June 27, 2019 at 12:33 PM with the headline "Citizenship question or not, worry persists in Georgia of census undercount of minorities."