Figure 1: The Average Cost of Counting Each Housing Unit (in Constant 2010 Dollars) Has Escalated Each Decade, While Mail Response Rates Have Declined
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report: www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-874
a) The 2010 Census life cycle runs from 2002-2013, so costs for the 2010 Census are not yet final.
Note: In the 2010 Census the Bureau used only a short-form questionnaire. For this report we use the 1990 and 2000 Census short-form mail response rate when comparing 1990, 2000, and 2010 mail-back response rates. Census short-form mail response rates are unavailable for 1970 and 1980, so we use the overall response rate.
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