In the midst of the current controversy over whether the 2020 U.S. Census will include a question about citizenship, Nancy Krieger of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health wrote in a new paper that inadequate census data is a threat to the nation’s health and to health equity.
The paper was published online July 3, 2019 in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).
Critics of the citizenship question proposed by the Trump administration cite evidence suggesting that it could discourage immigrants, whether legal or not, from participating, because of fear about sharing personal data as the federal government steps up deportation efforts.
In her paper, Krieger, professor of social epidemiology, offered several examples of past inaccurate census counts and their ramifications for public health. For instance, in the 1840 census, a problem with the layout of the census form led to the mistaken conclusion that there was a high amount of “insanity” among the “colored” population in the northernmost states, after which slavery supporters argued that blacks were incapable of handling freedom. Krieger also described how the chronically “woeful state” of census counts and vital statistics for Indigenous populations has led to misinformation about rates of death and disease among these groups.
“The U.S. Census and public health are interdependent,” Krieger wrote. “U.S. Census data have always been and will continue to be a political instrument, one that will be used—and potentially abused—to distribute political power and resources, thereby affecting people’s well-being and health inequities.”
Krieger was also interviewed, along with Margot Anderson, professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in a podcast about the 2020 census and public health, hosted by AJPH editor Alfredo Morabia.
Read Nancy Krieger’s AJPH study: The US Census and the People’s Health: Public Health Engagement From Enslavement and “Indians Not Taxed” to Census Tracts and Health Equity (1790–2018)
Listen to the podcast featuring Krieger: Census 2020 After the Supreme Court Decision (scroll to bottom for podcast)