Family Life

03.15.10 | FL News Team

The 2010 U.S. Census officially begins with the mailing of questionnaires today. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves will be in Phoenix, Arizona, to kick off the event and to make a few important points about the once-in-a-decade event required by the U.S. Constitution. Groves is expected to point out the importance of taking just ten minutes to fill out the form and mail it back. Taxpayers will pay 42-cents for the postage paid envelope when the form is returned. It costs 57-dollars for the Census Bureau to send someone to a door to follow up on each household that fails to respond.

 The Census Bureau will send out about 120-million questionnaires to U.S. households between Monday and Wednesday. The bureau says about 85-percent of Americans know about the census, but predicts nearly 48-million households will not respond. The Constitution requires counting every person in the nation every ten years to redistribute seats in the House of Representatives. Over the years, Congress has added requirements that help divvy up billions of dollars among the states. The census website says responses will help distribute 400-billion dollars to hospitals, schools, job training centers and for infrastructure from water projects to bridges.

 Among questions on the forms are the number of people living at an address; whether the home is owned or rented; a name, sex, age, date of birth, race and individual names. Responses are confidential by law. Everything anyone might need to know about the 2010 census is posted at 2010census.gov