Every 10 years, the U.S. population is counted via a census – and the 2020 census is right around the corner. In March, about 95% of the nation’s households will be receiving an invitation in the mail to participate. And 2020 will mark the first year that the census can be completed online.

How and why should you respond to that invitation? In this week's bonus episode, we talked with Joanna Beilman-Dulin from the Department of Administration to learn why it's important to participate and how it all works.
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TRANSCRIPT
Announcer: [00:00:00] Welcome to Wisconsin DNRs Wild Wisconsin - Off The Record podcast, information straight from the source.

Katie Grant: [00:00:12] Welcome back to another bonus episode of Wild Wisconsin - Off The Record. I'm your host DNRs digital media coordinator, Katie Grant. At the DNR, one of the tools we use to better understand animal populations such as eagles, deer, rattlesnakes and more is to simply count them. That's also the goal of the census that happens every 10 years to better understand our human population and where we all live.

2020 is a big year for a lot of things. We're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the Clean Air Act, the 30th anniversary of Wisconsin recycling laws, and if you couldn't guess where this was going, the 2020 census.

For this week's bonus episode, I sat down with Joanna Beilman-Dulin to learn why it's so important for you to participate and how it all works. So to sit back and listen in.

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:01:04] I am Joanna Beilman-Dulin and I am an employee at the Department of Administration. And what I do there is I am doing census coordination.

The 2020 census is right around the corner and it's so important for Wisconsin, and I do whatever I can to help promote the census and answer questions about it.

Katie Grant: [00:01:22] Fantastic. So, let's just kind of start at the beginning. What is the census?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:01:27] Sure. The census is a count of our nation's population. Every 10 years. Article 1 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that our nation's population be counted.

So we know where people live, what communities look like and it helps inform a lot of really important decisions made at the federal level, state level and even the local level.

Katie Grant: [00:01:47] So how does it all work?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:01:48] In mid-March, about 95% of the nation's households are going to get a, an invitation in the mail to participate in the census.

And when they get those invitations, you can go online, uh, to fill out your census online. It's actually really exciting. This is the first time ever that you can do the census online.

Katie Grant: [00:02:06] Yay, technology.

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:02:07] Absolutely, yay technology. Um, it's also mobile-friendly, fun fact. Um, but so people will get an invitation in the mail to participate and hopefully everybody responds right away, of course.

But, um, folks as if they don't respond right away, they'll continue to get a couple of reminders in the mail. Um, and then eventually a paper copy would come to them.

Katie Grant: [00:02:26] OK. And then what if you don't fill out the paper copy?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:02:30] Well, if you don't fill out the paper copy and you don't fill it out online or by phone, which are the three ways you can fill it out, um, beginning in about May, uh, census takers will, uh, be going door to door to, uh, check in with folks and make sure that they are remembering that they need to fill out the census. It is required under our constitution for every resident of the United States to participate. Uh, so they'll be going door to door to, um, connect with folks and follow up with people who haven't filled it out yet.

We want to make sure that we get a full, accurate count of everyone because as I said before, it just makes such a difference in our nation's policies.

Katie Grant: [00:03:06] Yeah. What kind of questions can you expect to be asked on the census?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:03:10] So there are a number of different demographic type questions.

Uh. How many people live in your household? What are their names? Uh, what race, what, uh, sex are people, questions of that nature. There's a lot of information that can be turned into statistics that can be useful later on. Um, any responses that people give are not going to be personally identifiable down the road. And, um, one question that's not on there actually is a citizenship question.

There was a lot of discussion about this several months ago about whether there would or would not be a citizenship question. There is not.

Katie Grant: [00:03:45] OK. Good to know. So how is all of this information used and why is it so important that we participate?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:03:51] It is used in so many different ways. I'm so glad you asked that question.

It will help guide the distribution of about $675 billion in federal funds. It will be used to determine how many different congressional seats, uh, each state gets in the next, uh, decade. Um, and it will also be used to help inform decisions that are made at the local level. It will be turned into demographic information that can be used by businesses trying to decide should we expand, should we relocate? Who are our customers? It will be used by, uh, you know, climate scientists and people making environmental policy decisions to look at where a different population centers and how are different governmental policies impacting people?

Katie Grant: [00:04:33] What are some of the reasons that people sometimes choose not to participate?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:04:39] I'm really glad you asked that question because there are a lot of historically under-counted populations. Um, our goal, of course, every 10 years is to count and account for every single person living in the nation, but some folks might be hard to locate, hard to contact, maybe nervous about sharing their information with the government.

Um, there are a wide range of historical reasons. There are a lot of, um, more contemporary reasons as well. Um, and so we want to take opportunities like this to reach out to people and, you know, encourage them, ask them to respond. Um, even if they're a little bit nervous. Um, census responses are protected and kept confidential by federal law.

Um, your, in your responses that you provide to the census are not going to be shared with any outside agency, including other agencies of the government. They reside purely within the U.S. Census Bureau. Um, the Census Bureau will then turn that into statistical information that can be used, but they will never be releasing any personal, uh, personally identifiable information.

Katie Grant: [00:05:42] And they're not asking for things like your social security number or your phone number or anything like that, right?

Joanna Beilman-Dulin: [00:05:48] They are wanting to get just demographic data. T...