1990 Census

WASHINGTON -- What should you believe: the 1990 Census or your own eyes?When it comes to the 98-unit Chesapeake Commons apartments, the old City College building at North Howard and Centre streets, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke told a congressional subcommittee yesterday that he believes his own eyes.The census indicates that the 5-year-old apartments in downtown Baltimore aren't there, he said."I go past it every day, and it's hard to persuade me it doesn't exist," the mayor said. "My wife is an ophthalmologist, and she does a pretty good job on my eyes."

THE DISCLOSURE last week that a dozen homes have been selected to give a few public housing tenants in Baltimore the opportunity to move out of the impoverished inner city as part of a court decree raises two related questions. First, have the demographics of the neighborhoods in which the homes will be located changed significantly since the 1990 census, from which data were used to identify eligible communities: those that were (a) predominantly white and (b) only slightly poor. Second, to what extent does it matter if they have?

The most difficult Americans for census-takers to count turn out to be the ones who are least able to speak for themselves - the nation's infants. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who compared the 1990 Census numbers with birth and death records have argued that the census missed more than 20 percent of all U.S. children who were under the age of 1 on April 1 of that year. That's about 815,000 infants in all. The same study also found that between 3 percent and 11 percent of school-age children were missed by the 1990 count, too. Such undercounts of children could result in inadequate planning decisions by school districts and nonprofit social agencies, child advocates say. They can also mean reduced state and local allocations from such federal programs as Head Start.

Maryland's foreign-born population tops 530,000 - more than one Maryland resident in 10 - according to the Census Bureau's best estimate since the 1990 census. The total is up 69 percent from the 313,000 foreign-born Marylanders counted in 1990, and it exceeds the Census Bureau's most recent estimate, reported last year, by about 80,000. Maryland's foreign-born are less likely to be Latino than those in the nation as a whole and more likely to be Asian or African. Nearly half of them - about 250,000 - arrived in the United States during the 1990s.

As Shirley L. Bigley worked her way up from law school graduate to Citibank Maryland vice president during the 1980s, she never felt like a pioneer among working women.It was more like being part of a movement, she says. Sure enough, newly released 1990 census figures show Ms. Bigley had plenty of female company as she climbed the job ladder.Tens of thousands of Maryland women -- and millions across the United States -- moved into professional and managerial jobs during the 1980s, the data show.

Barbara Bryant, director of the Census Bureau, was absolutely right when she said, "We cannot afford to plan to take the next census as we have taken recent censuses." Certainly not the way the bureau took the 1990 one.To begin with, the 1990 census was, at $2.6 billion, far too expensive. The General Accounting Office told Congress last month that the 1990 census cost 65 percent more in constant dollars than the 1980 census. Of course, there were more people to count, but the 1990 cost per household was $25, compared to $20 (constant dollars)

AS WITH everything that really counts in Washington, the eye-glazing debate over statistical corrections to the 1990 census was mostly about power and money. More specifically: your money and other people's power over your money. It's too important an issue to be settled solely by politicians.When Congress doles out some $59 billion annually for Head Start, social services, nutrition, homeless aid and many other programs, the main determinant of how much cash comes to states is the census.

WASHINGTON -- The new 1990 assignment of seats in the House of Representatives to the 50 states survived its first constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court yesterday, but another is to come later in the month.In a unanimous ruling, the justices upheld the 50-year-old mathematical formula that Congress devised to distribute House seats following each 10-year census.A special federal court in Montana had upset that plan temporarily last October by striking down the formula.However, the high court said that "Congress had ample power to enact" the particular formula that it chose in 1941, and to have it used automatically every decade since then.

As Shirley L. Bigley worked her way up from law school graduate to Citibank Maryland vice president during the 1980s, she never felt like a pioneer among working women.It was more like being part of a movement, she says. Sure enough, newly released 1990 census figures show Ms. Bigley had plenty of female company as she climbed the job ladder.Tens of thousands of Maryland women -- and millions across the United States -- moved into professional and managerial jobs during the 1980s, the data show.

Maryland's foreign-born population tops 530,000 - more than one Maryland resident in 10 - according to the Census Bureau's best estimate since the 1990 census. The total is up 69 percent from the 313,000 foreign-born Marylanders counted in 1990, and it exceeds the Census Bureau's most recent estimate, reported last year, by about 80,000. Maryland's foreign-born are less likely to be Latino than those in the nation as a whole and more likely to be Asian or African. Nearly half of them - about 250,000 - arrived in the United States during the 1990s.

Crofton Elementary School Principal Harry Zacharko has watched the 730-pupil school - in one of Anne Arundel County's fastest-growing areas - start bursting at the seams. In the past six years, the school's population has mushroomed to the point where the cafeteria doubles as a gym, an undersized auditorium forces school assemblies to be held off campus and three new portable classrooms - which Zacharko euphemistically calls "cottages" - are slated to join five already on campus this summer.

Maryland became a bigger, more suburban and more racially diverse state during the 1990s. The first detailed returns from the 2000 census show that the flight of white and black families from the largest cities continued, draining Baltimore and Washington of hefty chunks of their populations. At the same time, thousands more families - largely white - kept on going. They left or leapfrogged the inner suburbs, leaving them less white and more racially diverse than ever before. They built their new homes in former cornfields of the outer ring of suburban counties, bringing more-crowded roads and schools to once-rural landscapes from Harford in the north to Calvert in the south.

The most difficult Americans for census-takers to count turn out to be the ones who are least able to speak for themselves - the nation's infants. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who compared the 1990 Census numbers with birth and death records have argued that the census missed more than 20 percent of all U.S. children who were under the age of 1 on April 1 of that year. That's about 815,000 infants in all. The same study also found that between 3 percent and 11 percent of school-age children were missed by the 1990 count, too. Such undercounts of children could result in inadequate planning decisions by school districts and nonprofit social agencies, child advocates say. They can also mean reduced state and local allocations from such federal programs as Head Start.

Imagine the impact on traffic and the environment if another city with the population of Baltimore suddenly appeared inside the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. There's no need to imagine it. You're living with it. Population growth in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area since 1990 has added 632,000 people to the region - a number equal to the population of Baltimore last year - according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Most of that growth has been in the Washington suburbs, which added 515,000 people from 1990 to last year, a number nearly equal to Washington's current population.

Baltimore and federal officials announced plans yesterday to redouble efforts to contact an estimated 50,000 city households that remain uncounted in the 2000 census. Officials hope to avoid a repeat of the city's ranking in the 1990 census, when Baltimore placed 91st among 100 cities in accurately counting its population. Yesterday, Mayor Martin O'Malley said the city's efforts had reached "a critical juncture" as census workers turn their attention to the toughest cases, homes where people did not return census forms, ignored phone calls or slammed doors in the faces of questioners.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- As the Census Bureau geared up to visit the 35 percent or so of U.S. households that did not mail back their forms, as many as 500,000 census workers are training this week. They will begin knocking on doors tomorrow, part of an effort that Clinton administration officials have frequently called the largest peacetime mobilization in U.S. history. Census takers will visit homes through July as they attempt to locate the millions of individuals still unaccounted for in what the Census Bureau calls its nonresponse follow-up.

News that Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke will draft his 1991 redistricting plan using 10-year-old census data is causing anxiety among City Council members, some of whom are worried that the mayor may draw them out of their current councilmanic districts.The anxiety was apparent yesterday when council members learned that final 1990 census figures will not be available until at least April, two months after Schmoke must submit his redistricting plan to the council. The news came at the first of several planned hearings on the 1991 revision of the boundaries for the city's six councilmanic districts.

WASHINGTON -- The Census Bureau said yesterday that i would not readjust its annual population estimates to account for approximately 5.3 million people, largely members of minority groups and the homeless, who were left out of the 1990 Census.The Bureau did agree, however, to release unofficial adjusted figures that it said federal agencies could use in calculating unemployment rates, economic activity, health status, educational achievements and other data on Americans.But the most significant effect of the decision is to leave unchanged the statistical basis under which the federal government distributes $60 billion each year for projects ranging from feeding the poor to running mass transit systems.

Wearing dark suits and trailed by television cameras, the two men strode to the front of the room, smiling and greeting their audience like the seasoned politicians they are. But Baltimore County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger and Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin had no intention of delivering a dry address on tax cuts, health policy or the race for president. Their visit to Chantel Harris' fourth-grade class at Owings Mills Elementary School yesterday was designed to impart a message of civic duty and representation specifically tailored for a group of 22 well-behaved 9- and 10-year-olds.