Opinion: Proposed U.S. census changes could be catastrophic for public health — SkimNews
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- U.S. Federal Register published the proposed 2030 census changes on Sept. 10 under a notice titled "Decennial Census of the Population of Americans," announcing three unprecedented, untested alterations to how and who the count covers.
- Change 1 narrows the count from the "whole number of persons in each state" mandated by the 14th Amendment to "citizens or lawful permanent residents," excluding international students, work visa holders, refugees, asylees, and undocumented immigrants.
- Change 2 ties residence to where a person lived most between Jan. 3 and April 1 — and to the address used in tax records — which Krieger says will likely reassign college students to their parents' addresses and "snowbirds" to the states where they winter.
- Change 3 prohibits questions on race and ethnicity (asked since the first U.S. census in 1790) and on sexual orientation (first introduced in 2020).
- Public pushback extended the initial 33-day comment window; comments are now due by Nov. 2, the last public-input opportunity cited in the article.
- Krieger argues that because U.S. rates are computed as cases divided by the at-risk population, shrinking the denominator would artificially inflate reported morbidity and mortality — and stripping race/ethnicity data would obscure disparities such as Black women with completed college degrees having higher maternal mortality than white women with less than a high school diploma.
- The Census Bureau's own list of 50 census data uses cited by Krieger includes planning hospitals, nursing homes and clinic locations, estimating displacement after natural disasters, and assessing the spread of communicable disease.
Why it matters: Census counts feed every U.S. morbidity and mortality rate, federal health-funding formulas, and hospital-site planning — so selectively removing people from the count would simultaneously distort how disease burden is measured and which communities appear to need resources, while the Nov. 2 comment deadline is the last cited public-input window before the rules move toward implementation.
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