Business groups warn bill would hit US census response rates

Section 621 of the Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25 ) Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations bill, which passed the House Appropriations Committee on 9th July, states: “None of the funds in this Act may be used to enforce involuntary compliance, or to inquire more than twice for voluntary compliance with any survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census.” The bill did not get a vote on the House floor before August recess, but may be considered in September.

In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, 15 business groups, led by research industry body the Insights Association and including the American Advertising Federation (AAF) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), said that Section 621 “would ( 1 ) prohibit enforcement of the mandatory response requirement on the decennial headcount and the American Community Survey (ACS), and ( 2 ) severely constrict the ability to conduct basic contact and non-response follow-up operations across all Census Bureau surveys.”

The letter said the move would have “an especially devastating impact on the decennial census, which must send way more than just two invitations to just secure self-response”.

According to data from the Census Quality Reinforcement Task Force, the 2020 Census had counted only 28% of U.S. households after the first two contacts, as of March 25, 2020, and no state had achieved 35% coverage. 

By ceasing contact after that point, the business groups say the legislation would result in “as much as two-thirds” of the US population not being counted in the next census in 2030.

The groups urged Congress to remove the Section 621 provision of the bill.