Connecticut's Self-Response Rate Ranks 14th Among the 50 States

Every day, the US Census Bureau updates its Census 2020 self-responses dataset, where it reports figures by state and town. CTData Collaborative will be looking at those numbers to make sure Connecticut is on the right track to have each person counted!

What is the self-response rate? This is the percentages of households in each census tract that have completed their questionnaires online, by paper, and by phone. The Census Bureau has a master list of addresses for each census tract, and it calculates the percent of completed questionnaires from that master address list. (See more here.)

As of Monday, April 6, 2020, 47.6% of Connecticut residents had responded to 2020 Census. That puts CT 14th among the 50 states.

Connecticut ranks 14th among the 50 states, up from 23rd on March 23. Minnesota leads the way with a rate of 55.2%, and Alaska lags with a rate of 29.4%.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Response rates | 2020 Census. Retrieved on April 8, 2020 from https://2020census.gov/en/response-rates.html

Connecticut performs better than all other New England states, including its neighbors New York (40.0%), Rhode Island (42.8%), and Massachusetts (47.1%).

In Connecticut, there are 10 towns with self-response rates of under 35%. These include: Kent (33.3%), North Canaan (33.1%), Bridgeport (33.0%), Washington (32.9%), Norfolk (32.8%), Sharon (32.3%), Canaan (31.7%), Hartford (29.9%), Cornwall (28.6%), and Salisbury (25.1%).

Many of the towns with low self-response rates are in Litchfield County, which is the county with the second-lowest self-response rate (45.1%). Windham County has the lowest self-response rate in the state at 43.5%.

On the other hand, 5 towns have self-response rates at or above 60%, with Tolland continuing to lead with a self-response rate of (63.3%). Other towns with a high self-response rate include: Marlborough (61.6%), Simsbury (60.3%), Burlington (60.2%), and Cheshire (60.0%).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Response rates | 2020 Census. Retrieved on April 6, 2020 from https://2020census.gov/en/response-rates.html

Connecticut’s largest cities have lower response rates than Connecticut’s average. Hartford (29.9%) remains lowest while Fairfield (55.7%)is highest.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Response rates | 2020 Census. Retrieved on March 31, 2020 from https://2020census.gov/en/response-rates.html

Connecticut’s cities, as in all states, are at risk of being undercounted, and in turn, risk losing funding that residents need. Each city is made of of smaller areas called census tracts, and response rates vary among these smaller areas. While as a whole Hartford’s self response rate was 29.9%, the tract response rates range from a high of 44.8% (tract 5048), which is just under the Connecticut average, to a low rate of 8.2% (tract 5038, in dark orange below). You can explore tracts in your own community using the Census 2020 Response Rate Map or the Census 2020 Hard to Count Map.

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Census & ACSSarah Eisele-DyrliApril 9, 2020