Rural areas still lag in returning census forms

Rural areas and big cities have been slow to return Census questionnaires, but at least two states and hundreds of smaller jurisdictions have already surpassed their 2000 return percentages.  Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves said Monday about two of every three households have returned the forms, and North and South Carolina are each already two points ahead of their 2000 return percentage at 68 and 67 percent respectively, Carol Morello of The Washington Post reports. (Kentucky, The Rural Blog's home state, has matched its 2000 rate with 70 percent of forms returned, just above the national average of 66 percent.)

Groves characterized the early proceedings as "going quite well," but many rural areas still remain well below average. The return rate along the Texas-Mexico border is below 60 percent, Morello reports, and the South has been weak so far. Groves pointed to "language barriers among new immigrants and the difficulty of counting rural households that use post office boxes instead of street addresses for their mail" as factors in low return rates, Morello reports. Despite rumors to the contrary, Groves told Morello so far the bureau has found no evidence of "any impact from calls by some conservatives to boycott the census or answer only questions counting the number of people living in a household." (Read more)