Editorials

SAN FRANCISCO – Infants in California are less likely to be counted than in any other state when the U.S. Census Bureau conducts its surveys, according to a new analysis released Wednesday. 

And no where more so than San Francisco, the city where the greatest percentage of those under age one were missed. The census reportedly failed to count nearly four in ten of the city’s infants. 

The conclusions were drawn from 1990 census data but have implications for 2000 data that will trickle out in the coming months and years. 

“I was astounded by these findings and though they pertain to the 1990 count, they demonstrate the shortcomings that are inherent in the process of the census,” said study co-author Dr. Beth Osborne Daponte of Carnegie Mellon University. 

Overall in California, one in four infants were not counted, Daponte reported. 

Meanwhile, infants in North Dakota were most likely to be counted, as the census missed only 10 percent there, Daponte said. 

The Census Bureau, in a politically divisive blueprint established by the Clinton administration, is ascertaining whether the statistical method known as “sampling” offers the most accurate picture of the American population, including traditionally undercounted groups like minorities and the poor. 

Most Republicans contend the Constitution calls for an “actual enumeration” free of statistical adjustment and President Bush said during the campaign that a “head count” is the most accurate way to conduct the census. He has not said if he supports releasing sampled data.