Undercount

Finally, a good article on the undercount that has some attempt at serious investigative journalism, instead of making up ridiculous headlines based on the probably misquoted conjectures of a City Councilwoman (may I suggest this shirt for Diana Reyna?).

It would be interesting to see if the undercount is more of a New York phenomenon - in which New York-centric things like illegal subdivisions would probably be the culprit - or if the undercount is consistent among cities with high immigration (and especially looking at similar immigration patterns as New York), which would point to immigrants becoming even more reluctant respond to the census in the wake of increased immigration enforcement since 2001.

The Times article itself also focuses on a third culprit though - mistaking occupied apartments for vacant ones. This one is kind of strange, and apart from the "possible processing glitch" explanation that Census provides (we'll see if that's it when the review is conducted next month) the only culprit I can come up with immediately would be simple laziness on the part of the Census' field staff.