Who Was Undercounted, Overcounted in the 2020 Census?
Detailed Coverage Estimates for the 2020 Census Released Today
ERIC JENSEN AND TIMOTHY KENNEL
MARCH 10, 2022
The U.S. Census Bureau today released the most detailed estimates to date of the undercount and overcount in the 2020 Census, known as coverage error.
Coverage error, a measure of disagreement between the census counts and independent estimates of the population size, occurs when people are not counted (undercount) or are counted more than once or were included in error (overcount).
The results show that there was no statistically significant net national coverage error. In effect, there was not a statistically significant overcount or undercount for the total population. But there were some populations that were undercounted or overcounted such as young children, older adults and working-age men.
The Census Bureau uses two different approaches to measure coverage error in the decennial census: Demographic Analysis (DA) and the Post-Enumeration Survey (PES).
These programs provide some of our strongest indicators of the quality of the 2020 Census.
In effect, there was not a statistically significant overcount or undercount for the total population. But there were some populations that were undercounted or overcounted such as young children, older adults and working-age men.
The PES results released today also provide coverage errors by race and ethnicity.
These results showed statistically significant undercounts for the following populations: Black or African American alone or in combination, American Indian or Alaska Native alone or in combination, the Some Other Race alone or in combination, and Hispanic or Latino.
The PES found statistically significant overcounts for the White alone or in combination, Non-Hispanic White alone, and Asian alone or in combination populations. We did not find a statistically significant overcount or undercount for the Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander population.
Although people may want to know whether there was an undercount specifically for their city or neighborhood, it’s important to note that the coverage measurement programs are not that geographically precise: both the PES and DA are currently only available at the national level.
However, additional PES results for the total population for states will be available this summer. The PES will not release metrics below the state level. Experimental estimates for DA at the state and county level for the population ages 0 to 4 will also be released at a later date.