COVID-19 and the Census: How the 2010 Census Affected the Pandemic Response

• In Event: Political Institutions, Policies, and Public Health

Abstract

There has been a decent amount of media attention on how the COVID-19 pandemic may have affected the decennial census count in the United States in 2020. However, far less attention has been paid to how the previous census could have affected the responses to and preparedness for the pandemic across the country. Census data can have huge implications for public health; it is used to allocate state- and local-level health care funding, to determine the placement and capacity of hospitals and clinics, and to inform pandemic and other disaster-related planning. Building from this, I explore how population undercounts in the 2010 Census affected county-level responses to the pandemic in 2020. I argue that the severity of undercounts had a strong negative effect on the ability of local governments and hospitals to respond to the outbreak, particularly in the first-wave.

Author

• Ashley Moraguez, University of North Carolina, Asheville