View of Philadelphia from the Museum of Art #1The Philadelphia Inquirer reports this week on a new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts regarding census preparations in a number of large US cities.

The study compared Philadelphia’s census preparation efforts with those of five larger cities – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix – and five cities similar to Philadelphia and its history with the census: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Boston, Detroit and Atlanta.

Although the census is done by the federal government, ensuring the local count is complete and accurate has become a municipal self-promotion campaign.

“Census preparation really matters,” said [Thomas] Ginsberg, [the project manager of Pew’s Philadelphia Research Initiative,] and the census has become a hard sell.

Why is it a ‘hard sell?’

Immigrants, especially those here illegally, are suspicious of the count despite the promise of anonymity. They fear the count could lead to discovery and deportation of them or relatives.

Anti-government campaigns involving the Obama Administration’s proposal for universal health insurance coverage also appear to be affecting the census.

And the economic recession has dramatically reduced local tax revenue, meaning there is much less to spend on municipal census promotion efforts.

And the sociological commentary…

“Nobody is expecting a good census in 2010. I’m not optimistic,” said Joseph J. Salvo, New York City’s population division chief and a sociologist, quoted in the Pew study.

Salvo, who advises and critiques the Census Bureau, noted that “since the last census we had 9/11, privacy issues, trust of government issues. And there’s been no public declaration that we’re going to suspend immigration raids like in 2000.”

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