PROVIDENCE – With six days to go before census forms are due back, 64 percent of Rhode Island households had mailed their questionnaires back as of Monday.
During the last census, in 2000, 70 percent of Rhode Island households mailed back their census forms.
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The state’s mail participation rate is running slightly behind Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of which are at 66 percent, and New Hampshire (65 percent), but ahead of Maine and Vermont, at 61 percent each. (The figures do not include forms returned to the Census Bureau as undeliverable.)
Households that do not return their forms by Friday may be visited by census workers when they start going door-to-door to collect census responses on May 1. The responses will be used to parcel out more than $400 billion in annual federal funding over the next decade.
Rhode Island received an estimated $1,794 per resident in federal funds tied to census data in fiscal 2008, the 12th-highest amount in the country, according to a study released by the Brookings Institution last month. More than half the $1.9 billion total was for Medicaid.
Washington, D.C., Vermont, Alaska, New York and Massachusetts got the most census-determined money, while Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, Florida and Utah got the least.
In Providence, only 51 percent of households had mailed back their census forms as of Monday. In 2000, 56 percent of the capital’s households mailed back their forms.
The only city with a lower mail participation rate than Providence is Central Falls, at 50 percent – although that is already better than the city’s 2000 participation rate of 49 percent.
The cities with the highest mail participation rates so far are Warwick (71 percent), East Providence and Cranston (67 percent each).
Among towns, Barrington households have mailed back the most forms – 77 percent – and Charlestown residents have mailed back the least (50 percent). Participation is up significantly this year compared with 2000 in Narragansett (62 percent), South Kingstown (70 percent), Foster and Exeter (71 percent each).
U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves has emphasized that the decennial count will cost taxpayers less if households mail back their forms rather than force census workers to come find them. Responding by mail costs the government about 42 cents, while an in-person visit costs $57.
“Nationwide, about 65 percent of households have mailed back their census forms. In 2000, the mail participation rate was 72 percent,” Groves said Monday. “Residents who fail to mail back their forms by April 16 may be visited by a census worker in May.”
Additional information is available at 2010.census.gov.
