Conclusion

We are not so far removed from an American past with very different laws, social structures, and cultural norms. The census and the country have changed a lot in 24 decades—sometimes incrementally, other times dramatically. We might expect the census of the future to reflect our more diverse, connected, and technologically advanced society. How many questions will it contain? What racial categories, family relationships, and living arrangements will it ask about? How, when, and where will people fill it out? The democratic ideal of the census means that every ten years, we have the chance to carry out a better system to count every person in the United States, no matter how remote their home, itinerant their lifestyle, or significant the communication barriers to them might be.

If you’re reading this in the United States in 2020, you can fill out your census at https://my2020census.gov/. This project is not affiliated with the U.S. Census.

Methodology

The dataset for this story was constructed by cataloging every question on the census questionnaires from 1790 to 2020, and drawing a link between instances of the same or substantially similar questions. Each question is tagged by the type of answer that was expected; whether the question was asked of an individual, a household, or a sample of those; and whether the question only applied to a subset of people (like an age range and/or sex). Question categories are assigned based on our best guess at the intent of the question, while also keeping categories broad enough to be useful to compare. For example, questions about how long someone has lived in their house (tenure) is categorized as Housing, while marital status and number of children (fertility) are grouped under Family. The housing questionnaires from 1940 to 2000 are shown as just one circle per decade, accompanied by an image showing one of the many housing questions from that decade. We have excluded some administrative questions used by enumerators to organize and keep track of their work, such as the address, telephone number, or order of the houses they visited; and “signpost” questions, for example, about a person’s age range to determine whether to ask them questions for people over 14. We also excluded questions that are just references to supplemental schedules, such as those with additional information on farms.

Credits

Thanks to Jan Diehm for guidance, research, writing, and editing, and the whole team at The Pudding for this great collaboration. Thanks to Hermann Zschiegner and the rest of my colleagues at TWO-N for design support, feedback, and encouragement. All Media Assets: U.S. Census Bureau; Library of Congress. Primary sources for census questionnaires Through the Decades - History - U.S. Census website. https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/

Bohme, Frederick G. 200 years of US census taking: Population and housing questions, 1790-1990. Vol. 3. US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1989.

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. https://raogk.org Secondary sources and recommendations for further reading Anderson, Margo J. The American census: A social history. Yale University Press, 2015.

Anderson, Margo J. Encyclopedia of the US Census. CQ Press, 2000.

Bass, Frank. Guide to the Census,+ Website. Vol. 581. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

Jobe, Margaret M. "Native Americans and the US census: A brief historical survey." Journal of Government Information 30.1 (2004): 66-80.

O'Hare, William P. "Problems, Possibilities, and Prospects." Journal of Official Statistics 8.4 (1992): 499-511.

Schultz, Kevin M. "Religion as identity in postwar America: The last serious attempt to put a question on religion in the United States census." The Journal of American History 93.2 (2006): 359-384.

Winkle, Kenneth J. "The United States Census and Community History." The History Teacher 28.1 (1994): 87-101.