Los Angeles County is facing the unprecedented challenge of completing the 2020 census enumeration, the once in a decade effort to count every American for critically important political, economic and social reasons. On April 30, 2020, the County was about 11 percentage points and a third of a million households behind the 2010 census. The shortfall coincides with the start of the COVID-19 crisis, but several other factors contribute to the problem. This problem is compounded by a major change in the way most residents fill out the census form (from mailing in paper questionnaires in 2010 to answering online in 2020), linguistic and cultural barriers, lack of internet access, and socioeconomic disparities. The net results are systematic and systemic geographic variations in the response rate, with many low-income and minority neighborhoods lagging far behind. The places with the lowest response rates face a gap at least twice as high as for the rest of the county. On average, these low-response places are 29 percentage points behind. To ensure that the residents of Los Angeles County receive fair political representation and just resource allocation, it is vital that stakeholders proactively assess and revamp the enumeration process to minimize the overall undercount and the racial differential undercount. 

This resource paper analyzes the growth of the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) population over the next quarter century based on projections from the U.S. Census Bureau and supplementary estimates by the authors. Overall, this population will increase from about 1.5 million in 2015 to nearly 2.3 million in 2040, about three times greater than the increase for the total U.S. population. Most NHOPIs are indigenous, but immigrants comprise about a fifth of the population. This group is relatively young, but median age will increase over time. Youth comprised about a third of the population in 2015 and over a quarter in 2014. The elderly share will nearly double to about one in eight by 2040. NHOPIs are more likely to be multiracial than any other racial group, and NHOPIs of mixed-race will comprise over half the population a quarter century from now.

This Resource Paper analyzes the growth of the Asian American (AA) population over the next quarter century based on projections from the U.S. Census Bureau and supplementary estimates by the authors. The number of Asian Americans will increase from 20.5 million in 2015 to 35.7 million in 2040, making them the fastest-growing racial population in the nation. Like the nation as a whole, the AA population will age over the next quarter century, with youth declining from a quarter to a little more than a fifth of the AA population and the elderly increasing from a tenth to about a sixth. Immigrants will continue to be a majority of Asian Americans, but their share will decline from two-thirds to one half. After 2040, U.S.-born AAs (those who are Asian alone and from mixed-race backgrounds) will comprise a majority of the population. Another significant change will be the growth of multiracial Asian Americans, increasing from a tenth of the population 1990 to a sixth in 2040.

Los Angeles County is facing the unprecedented challenge of completing the 2020 census enumeration, the once in a decade effort to count every American for critically important political, economic and social reasons. On April 30, 2020, the County was about 11 percentage points and a third of a million households behind the 2010 census. The shortfall coincides with the start of the COVID-19 crisis, but several other factors contribute to the problem. This problem is compounded by a major change in the way most residents fill out the census form (from mailing in paper questionnaires in 2010 to answering online in 2020), linguistic and cultural barriers, lack of internet access, and socioeconomic disparities. The net results are systematic and systemic geographic variations in the response rate, with many low-income and minority neighborhoods lagging far behind. The places with the lowest response rates face a gap at least twice as high as for the rest of the county. On average, these low-response places are 29 percentage points behind. To ensure that the residents of Los Angeles County receive fair political representation and just resource allocation, it is vital that stakeholders proactively assess and revamp the enumeration process to minimize the overall undercount and the racial differential undercount.

Thisstudy provides information to public agencies and community organizations to helpthem better identify neighborhoods with a high concentration of vulnerable renters, tounderstand the neighborhoods’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and todesign outreach programs that address the specific challenges in each place.Specifically, this study utilizes three dimension to identify vulnerable neighborhoods: (1)those with a disproportionate large number of renters on the edge of financialvulnerability due to high housing cost burden; (2) with a disproportionate large numberof workers vulnerable to job displacement due to retail and service-sector closures; and(3) with a disproportionate number of people excluded from the federal Coronavirus Aid,Relief and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act.

The report focuses on mandated shelter-in-place policies, a key public response to the COVID-19 crisis, and shows how the capacity to shelter in place safely and easily varies across neighborhoods, thus revealing structural inequalities. The Shelter-in-Place-Burden Index, devised by Professor Paul Ong and his colleagues, reveals the strain and stress carried by low-income and minority neighborhoods, a pattern that is becoming starkly evident across the United States and that perpetuates existing systems of spatialized disadvantage. We invite you to read and disseminate the report and to consider its implications for advocacy and action.

This report examines the California labor force—both salary and wage earners—to identify workerswho are jobless as a result of COVID-19, and the direction and magnitude of racial/ethnic disparities.It examines the totality of the pandemic’s effect through mid-April 2020. Not all jobless individualsare properly considered in recent data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on California’slabor force. An important distinction among COVID-19 jobless individuals is whether they receiveunemployment benefits. Since both the state and federal governments have addressed the pandemic’seconomic devastation to workers by expanding the Unemployment Insurance (“UI”) program, wecalculate the number of jobless Californians who are eligible for UI and those who are unable toreceive benefits. As officials have sought to “flatten the curve” and prevent the number of new casesfrom overwhelming the healthcare system by limiting person-to-person interactions, restricting groupgatherings, encouraging “physical distancing,” and ordering people to “shelter-in-place,”6 policymakershave extended the UI benefit period and increased benefits to reduce risk of infection.7 Yet the relianceon UI benefits, a system that is less equipped to protect low-wage workers in the service sector, excludesundocumented workers and other vulnerable workers, including those new to the labor force andthose with low wages. As a result, millions of Californians are left further exposed to hardship during thepandemic.