HKS Prof Appointed to Census Group

Failing to complete the decennial United States Census is costly—local and state governments can lose thousands of dollars per absentee American, while underrepresented communities risk losing additional resources and representation. Understandably, then, bureaucrats and activists are concerned about the roughly 700,000 African Americans unaccounted for in the 2000 Census. Kim M. Williams wants to help.

Williams, associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School, was appointed late last month to the Census Advisory Committee on the African American Population.

“She’s one of the leading scholars on the multiracial movement in the country,” said sociology professor Mary C. Waters, who advised the Census Bureau on multiracial demography for its 1990 and 2000 surveys.

Williams’s first book, “Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America,” published in 2006, examines one of the key decisions that Waters advised—when the 2000 Census allowed respondents to identify as multiple races for the first time.

The Constitution stipulates that every American be counted every ten years, but the Census Bureau routinely undercounts certain demographics.

The Bureau estimates that it missed 6.1 million people—mostly low-income and minority individuals—in their most recent 2000 survey.

Black males between the ages of 18 and 34 “are least likely to be willing to deal with the government in the form of the Census-taker,” Williams said.

Williams attributes this disparity to the large proportion of African Americans who rent, who distrust the government, who are in poverty, and who need translations into other languages.

The young professor’s solution is to use a pinwheel or sliding handout to educate this population about the political and economic costs of not responding.

“If you don’t fill out the Census, then your tax dollars have to be used to send someone out to your house, and the overall cost of the Census increases,” Williams said. “Money that would have gone to your community will go elsewhere, and you are at risk of losing a congressional representative in the aggregate.”

Reverend Kenneth B. Miller, chairman of the Census Advisory Committee on the African American Population, praised Williams’s initial recommendations, which she presented at the group’s annual meeting last month.

“She certainly will be a tremendous asset,” he said.

The Census Bureau formed the Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees in the 1980s to address the systematic undercounting of minority populations. Five such committees now meet annually and advise the Census Bureau on the issue.

Sociology professor Waters said she thinks Williams’s previous research on Census politics makes her a good match for the job.

“It’s always interesting,” she said of advising the survey. “But it’s also a very political process, and it’s very influenced by all the political stakeholders in the process.”

Williams was appointed to a three-year term on the committee along with Mary A. McGehee, a research analyst at the Arkansas Department of Health.

The committee “lost a lot of bodies” in the past few years, said chairman Miller.

“Fortunately ,with the addition of Kim and [McGeHee], we are really looking very good,” he said. “Now we have the most Ph.D.s of any committee.”

—Staff writer Jeremy S. Singer-Vine can be reached at jsvine@fas.harvard.edu.