Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt Wednesday said the same percentage of households have returned their census forms this year as did in 1990, exceeding the bureau's national goal by 4 percentage points.
Prewitt said 65 percent of American households have returned their census forms, the same rate as in 1990 and better than the 61 percent rate for which the bureau had budgeted.
The bureau now faces the "even more demanding task" of sending out about 500,000 enumerators to count those who did not return forms.
"This decline was stopped and, in thousands of communities, reversed," Prewitt declared, referring to declining participation rates in past decades. However, Prewitt said long form participation was "compromised" by privacy concerns, reporting that 54.1 percent of households returned long forms compared to 60 percent in 1990.
Prewitt did not specifically lay blame on some congressional Republicans who suggested households not answer questions they found too intrusive, but did say, "A garbled message was sent that somehow the information threatened privacy."
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