Estimating the Potential Effects of Adding a Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census

J. David Brown, Misty Heggeness, Suzanne Dorinski, Lawrence Warren and Moises Yi ()
Additional contact information
Moises Yi: U.S. Census Bureau

No 12087, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The self-response rate is a key driver of the cost and quality of a census. The addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census could affect the self-response rate. We predict the effect of the addition of a citizenship question on self-response by comparing mail response rates in the 2010 Census, which did not have a citizenship question, and the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS), which included a citizenship question for the same housing units. To distinguish a citizenship question effect from other factors, we compare the actual ACS-Census difference in response rates for households that may contain noncitizens to the ACS-Census difference for all-U.S. citizen households. We estimate the addition of a citizenship question will have a 5.8 percentage point (ppt) larger effect on self-response rates in households that may have noncitizens relative to all-U.S. citizen households. Noncitizens are also 36.2 ppts less likely to report citizenship status that is consistent with administrative records compared to citizens. Only 6.2 ppts of this difference is explained by observed characteristics.

Keywords: citizenship; immigration; sensitive questions; nonresponse; administrative records (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 F22 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2019-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published as 'Predicting the Effect of Adding a Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census' in: Demography, 2019, 56 1173–1194.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12087.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12087

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().