Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, Washington, DC, 20233, USA.
Research and Methodology Directorate, U.S. Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, Washington, DC, 20233, USA.
Demography. 2019 Aug;56(4):1173-1194. doi: 10.1007/s13524-019-00803-4.
The addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census could affect the self-response rate, a key driver of the cost and quality of a census. We find that citizenship question response patterns in the American Community Survey (ACS) suggest that it is a sensitive question when asked about administrative record noncitizens but not when asked about administrative record citizens. ACS respondents who were administrative record noncitizens in 2017 frequently choose to skip the question or answer that the person is a citizen. We predict the effect on self-response to the entire survey by comparing mail response rates in the 2010 ACS, which included a citizenship question, with those of the 2010 census, which did not have a citizenship question, among households in both surveys. We compare the actual ACS-census difference in response rates for households that may contain noncitizens (more sensitive to the question) with the difference for households containing only U.S. citizens. We estimate that the addition of a citizenship question will have an 8.0 percentage point larger effect on self-response rates in households that may have noncitizens relative to those with only U.S. citizens. Assuming that the citizenship question does not affect unit self-response in all-citizen households and applying the 8.0 percentage point drop to the 28.1 % of housing units potentially having at least one noncitizen would predict an overall 2.2 percentage point drop in self-response in the 2020 census, increasing costs and reducing the quality of the population count.
在 2020 年人口普查中增加公民身份问题可能会影响自我响应率，这是人口普查成本和质量的关键驱动因素。我们发现，在美国社区调查（ACS）中的公民身份问题回答模式表明，当问到行政记录中的非公民时，这是一个敏感问题，但当问到行政记录中的公民时，就不是一个敏感问题。2017 年，被记录为行政记录非公民的 ACS 受访者经常选择跳过该问题，或者回答该人是公民。我们通过比较 2010 年 ACS 中包含公民身份问题的邮件回复率与 2010 年人口普查中不包含公民身份问题的回复率，预测了整个调查的自我回复效果，这两个调查都包括了家庭。我们比较了可能包含非公民的家庭（对问题更敏感）与仅包含美国公民的家庭之间的实际 ACS-人口普查响应率差异。我们估计，在可能有非公民的家庭中，增加公民身份问题将对自我响应率产生 8.0 个百分点的更大影响，而在仅拥有美国公民的家庭中则不会。假设公民身份问题不会影响所有公民家庭的单位自我响应，并且将 8.0 个百分点的降幅应用于至少有一个非公民的 28.1%的住房单元，那么可以预测 2020 年人口普查的自我响应率将整体下降 2.2 个百分点，从而增加成本并降低人口普查的质量。
