Census loss to county, town in millions, not billions

Last week an over-zealous writer transposed a few numbers resulting in a headline of “If census ended now, county would lose $341 billion.”
Well, that’s not quite the case. The correct loss to the county is $341 million over a 10-year period. Of course, that’s still no figure to be sneezed at.
In 2010, the state left roughly $13.2 billion in Federal dollars on the table because of a 9% undercount, money that could have been well used by the state over the last decade.
Census officials had extended the deadline for the count through October, but now the count has been moved back and is set to end at the end of September.
So that’s about two months for the state, and for Walthall County and Tylertown, to up its total count.
Toward the end of July Walthall’s response rate was at 52.3%. While the county’s estimated entitlement of federal funds totals $714 millon over the next decade, at its present response rate the county will receive something like $373,578,900 if the count were to end today. With that response rate, it means that 47.7% isn’t counted. If that undercount doesn’t improve, the county would leave $340,721,100 on the table–money it won’t get over the next decade because people didn’t fill out the census.
The town’s response rate was 53.2%. The town’s estimated entitlement of federal funding over the next decade would amount to $71.3 million if it turned in a 100% count. However, at the present response rate, the city will collect $37,984,800 over the next 10 years. And like the county, the town, toward the end of July, showed 46.8% not responding to the census. If the census were to end today, and the undercount were to remain unchanged, Tylertown would lose $33,415,200 over the next decade due to people not filling out the census form.
And, at this stage people need to respond as the deadline for census response has been moved up, ending Sept. 30 rather than Oct. 31.