VACULPEP-L Archives

From: George Thurston <>
Subject: [VACULPEP] Why the Census needs close corroboration!!
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 23:20:45 -0400

An A.P. story by Genaro C. Armas in many of today's newspapers
(5 July 2000) confirms in spades what most genealogy researchers
preach and practice -- and too often ignore at their own cost --
about the reliability of census records as documents. The dateline
is Philadelphia. The lead is:

"Elnora Cooper is 76 years old, but she [was] never counted in the
census until now.

"This is the first time I've ever filled it out," Cooper said, after Census
Bureau workers urged her to do just that, during an event in the
Philadelphia senior home where she lives. "I've been in North Phila-
delphia for 50 years, but whenI first saw that form, I said 'what the
devil is this?' "

"She's not the oonly one mystified. The agency estimates that in the
last census 10 years ago, it missed about 8 million people, while
double-counting 4 million for a net undercount of 1.6 percent of the
population...."

It is probably fair to assume that the farther back you go in the
census records, the less comprehensive they are -- and the less accurate
are the ones they do include.

Thought you'd like to know.

George in Tallahassee

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