Puerto Ricans Are Ignoring the Census, Risking Future Funding

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- As Americans are being asked to stand up and be counted in the 2020 Census, Puerto Ricans are taking a pass.

The U.S. commonwealth has a census self-response rate of just 27%—the lowest of any U.S. jurisdiction and well behind the national average of 63%. Alaska, the other national laggard, has a comparatively robust response rate of 49%.

Just how many people the island has lost in the last decade—driven away by a deep recession, political instability, and natural disasters—remains a matter of contention, particularly on Wall Street. The territory has been mired in court proceedings since 2017, when it sought to reduce nearly $125 billion in debt and pension liabilities by filing for municipal bankruptcy--the largest in U.S. history. As investors try to claw their money back, the question of how many taxpayers remain on the island to shoulder that burden has taken center stage.

The accuracy of the count will also have deep repercussions for the island, which is why Governor Wanda Vázquez regularly issues statements urging residents to fill out the paperwork, saying the territory's economic health depends on it. More than 300 federal agencies use data from the decennial census to allocate an estimated $1.5 trillion in funds to states each year, says Andrew Reamer, a research professor at George Washington University—everything from lunch money to disbursements for highway construction.

“This will be the first time we can officially assess how much migration there was during the decade,” says Alexis Santos, an assistant professor of demography at Pennsylvania State University. “I think it's safe to say that this is the most important census that Puerto Rico has ever had.”

Quantifying the impact of an inaccurate count is tricky because it depends on who's not being counted. Whether a person is elderly, poor, unemployed, living in a rural area—different demographic factors tilt the balance of different government programs. But at the most basic level, “every person counts,” Reamer says. “If you and I do not fill out the census form, our community loses money.”

The U.S. Census Bureau says it will close the data gap in Puerto Rico with door-to-door surveys that began at the end of July. The stakes are high: Any errors that might occur now won't be corrected until the next census in 2030. “If Puerto Rico misses 100,000 people in 2020 they are gone for a decade,” Reamer says.

The government estimates Puerto Rico has lost about 14% of its inhabitants since the 2010 census, leaving it with a population of 3.2 million. Many left after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017. And even more have fled a grinding economic crisis that has seen gross domestic output contract 10% from 2009 to 2019. Compounding the problem, very few people have been moving to the tropical island. But just how dreadful the decade has been is a mystery that can be resolved only by a direct census-to-census comparison.

The data will also be key to predicting the future. Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University, co-authored a study that argues that most government agencies on the island—relying on their own experts—are overestimating the size of Puerto Rico's population in the years to come.

“Demography is somewhat politicized,” Keenan says. An agency interested in protecting bondholders, for example, may look for forecasts that project a robust tax base in the future. The same goes for agencies seeking federal money to expand roads or rebuild after a hurricane. “People have a self-interest in steering these numbers one way or another.”

Keenan's study suggests the island could lose half its residents—1.6 million people—over the next 30 years. But underpinning those grim projections is census data, and that's why these next few months will be so critical. “The census is fundamental to understanding the future population and preparing for those future populations,” he says.

Officials at the U.S. Census Bureau say that while Puerto Rico's self-response rate is unusually low—about half the 2010 number—it's not surprising. According to Jeff Behler, the regional director for the U.S. Census, the agency started hand-delivering census packets on March 14, only to suspend its work two days later when the island went into one of America's strictest lockdowns amid the surge in coronavirus cases. It didn't restart that process until the end of May.

During the last week of July, some 10,000 census “enumerators” began going door to door to pull data from the silent households. “I am confident we are going to get a 100% response rate,” Behler says, describing the low initial count as little more than an inconvenience. “It just means our workload in Puerto Rico is a little bigger.”

On a narrow road in the heart of San Juan, a group of men sat outside of a car garage and motioned to a white-bagged census packet that had been hanging on the fence of a nearby house for months. It would never get answered because the home had been abandoned after Hurricane Maria, they said. Other homes on the street were empty because their residents had been moved to senior care facilities or joined the wave of people heading to the U.S. mainland.

Santos Burgos, 60, said he'd received his census packet but hadn't filled it out yet. “My brother and I looked at it, but it's just too confusing,” he said. “We're waiting for the census people to come by and help us. Tell them we're still waiting.”
 
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