A UCLA report published today shows that the 2020 Census will severely undercount immigrants, low-income people and people of color.

Two key reasons are the COVID-19 pandemic and a directive issued July 21 by the Trump administration to cut population data collection operations short by one month; the Census Bureau must now end field data collection by Sept. 30.

To date, 93 million households, nearly 63% of all households in the U.S. have responded to the 2020 Census. In 2010, 74% of households in the United States filled out and mailed back their 2010 Census questionnaires, matching the final mail participation rate of the 2000 Census.

The White House directive and the public health crisis have made it an enormous challenge for the Census Bureau to ensure a complete and fair enumeration for the 2020 Census, according to the researchers. They write that racial and economic class biases threaten and undermine the goals of equal political representation and just allocation of resources.

The new analysis (PDF), by researchers from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Ong & Associates, uses U.S. Census Bureau COVID Tracking Project data as of Aug. 1, and updates a previous UCLA report that analyzed self-response rates as of June 1.

The current report examines changes from 2010 to 2020, and the spread between tracts with high response rates and tracts with low response rates. While the overall response gap from 2010 to 2020 has closed to three to four percentage points as of Aug. 1, some communities have experienced more barriers to participating. Low-income and minority neighborhoods had lower response rates in 2010 than more advantaged neighborhoods, and that gap has only widened in 2020.

Place-based vulnerability indices are valuable analytical tools that policy makers could use to prioritize the most-at-risk neighborhoods for interventions, including the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The indicators, nonetheless, may not be appropriate for many at-risk populations, particularly smaller groups that tend to be less geographically concentrated.

To better understand the limitations of four vulnerability indicators, out new brief assesses their relative ability to include American Indians, Pacific Islanders and select Asian American ethnic subgroups (Cambodians, Filipinos and Koreans). These groups have factors that potentially place them at greater risk from the pandemic because of their jobs, low socioeconomic status and poor living conditions.  Despite these heightened risks, many members of these groups do not reside in neighborhoods designated as being highly vulnerable places by the indicators. The indicators perform relatively better for American Indians and Cambodians.

This report by UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and Ong & Associates assesses four vulnerability indicators that are being used by public agencies as policy tools to select the most vulnerable neighborhoods for interventions. These indicators can play a role in prioritizing the provision of pandemic resources and services; consequently, they have implications for how many people of color and minority neighborhoods are served.

This study compares three pre-pandemic indicators and a more recently developed indicator based on pre-existing health conditions. The analysis focuses on the numbers of people of color residing in designated high-vulnerability neighborhoods, and the relative number of minority neighborhoods that fall into the high-vulnerability areas. Race/ethnicity is important because people of color encounter multiple dimensions of inequality that are only partially reflected in the indicators.

The findings show noticeable differences in the groups and places designated as being vulnerable, thus the choice of which indicator to use has highly consequential implications in terms of who is served and who is not along racial lines.