The U.S. Census Bureau now has received cooperation from 39 percent of the roughly 42 million households that did not return a census form before mid-April. Each household was counted by one of the 460,000 census takers during the second phase of Census 2000.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington this week, Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt said, “Thirty-nine percent is, for us, a good number.”
However, he said, “The earlier weeks are the easiest weeks, and the rate will slow down as we reach the harder cases. Nevertheless, it is very reassuring that we are getting the level of cooperation right now with the American public that allows us to be at 39 percent of our workload.”
The bureau has scheduled approximately 10 weeks to complete the nonresponse workload. The effort started April 27 and will run through July 7. This week's report reflected enumeration results through May 16.
Direct marketers often use census information to fill in missing pieces of large consumer databases.
