A New Approach for the 2030 Decennial Census - A 21st Century Census for a 21st Century Society

The founding fathers realized a census was necessary to establish the republican form of government based on the representation of the resident population as it distributed itself across the original 13 states and then spread into new territories, soon to become new states. The decennial census was a mechanism to apportion the House of Representatives based on each state's population size. It was early recognized that the massive effort to count everyone in the growing country and locate them at their permanent residence could provide additional information inexpensively, which gradually led to an enlarged census of the social, demographic, and housing characteristics of the total U.S. population.

To meet the country’s needs, we propose a new process whereby essential data will be built over the decade to provide a complete and accurate enumeration of the population of the United States for the first time in 2030. A vital component of this enumeration will be to meet the constitutional requirements of the 2030 Census to provide state population totals. This enumeration will also be used as a benchmark for tabulations created throughout the decade by the augmentation of the 2020 decennial census with multi-source federal and private sector sources. We call this an Essential-Data Count of the Resident Population coupled with a 21st Century Census Information Platform.

Keller S, Shipp S. A New Approach for the 2030 Decennial Census - A 21st Century Census for a 21st Century Society, Technical Report TR 2022-022. Proceedings of the Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia; 2021 February. https://doi.org/10.18130/3was-x496.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Grants G-2019-11316 and G-2020-14002