As of Friday April 3rd, 0nly 40% of Florida households have responded to the Census.
Miami-Dade County is home to a lot of hard-to count communities.
Our hard-to-count population includes households with children under age 5, communities of color, high poverty households, and foreign-born residents (including Hispanic, Haitian and other immigrant communities). In fact, of the county’s 519 census tracts, 290 (56%) of them had a low response rates in the 2010 Census.
The national response rate for census completion in 2010 was approximately 82 percent whereas Miami-Dade County’s response was about 72 percent. With an estimated population of nearly 2.8 million people including about 560,000 children/youth under 18 years old, including 33,000 child births annually, we find it prudent to be vigilant about ensuring an accurate count.
In the 2010 Census, 4.6% (almost 1 million) of young children aged 0-4 were not counted in the U.S. Undercount rates for young children were more than twice as high as the undercount rate of any other age group. Young Black and Hispanic children were missed twice as often in the 2010 Census as White children. Over 200,000 of Florida’s young children could go uncounted now in 2020. Florida has the 4th highest number of young children living in hard-to-count census tracts. 205,237 (19%) of Florida’s young children live in hard-to-count census tracts.
The state lost an estimated $20 billion in federal funding between 2010 and 2020. In fact, Florida had the third largest undercount in the nation, with an estimated 1.4 million omitted.
