me is Dagmar Benesova, World Business Press Online. I’m from Slovakia. My question is : You mentioned that this year there will be just 10 questions in the form and that it will be the shortest form since 1976, so – MR. WEINBERG:
Oh, 1790. Thank you. So my question is the reason why there will be just 10 questions is because of the money, because of the economic crisis or because – less questions, less paper, less people to (inaudible), or because you want to address more people? It will be easier for them to answer the questions? And one more question is: You mentioned that this year, you are mailing the forms to the Americans, to the households, and in the previous years you used to visit the households. It is also the reason that you want to save money, or why? MR. WEINBERG:
All right. Two separate questions. QUESTION:
Yes, thank you. MR. WEINBERG:
We found in 2000 that when we sent out both the short form and a long form, the long form went to about one in six households. We got a much higher mail return rate from the people who got the short form than from the people who got the long form. So we figured it would be easier for people to send back just a short form, and it would be cheaper. We would save money in the long run of focusing on just the short form and letting the American Community Survey do the long form. So it was mainly for cost reasons that we went to a short form, because we now have this other mechanism for getting the long form information.
Now as far as the mail out/mail back strategy, we have used this for many decades. We actually started testing it in 1950 Census and continued testing it in ’60, and used it for a great part of the population in ’70, and it was really our main way to do the census starting in 1980. It’s now reached – we use the mail method for basically 99 percent of the population now, but we can see the writing on the wall that people, especially the younger age groups, would prefer to be able to fill this out on the internet or on a smart phone, or who knows what else will be around in 10 years? And we want to be ready for that. So we think that the – and we certainly would actually prefer to have the electronic data come directly into our system rather than having them fill out the paper. You have to send it to a huge data capture center, where it’s checked in, it’s scanned, any of the write-in entries is keyed, and then it comes to us.
So actually, the internet and other electronic means can be a big cost saver for us as well. But it depends on a number of things: the acceptance of not only the 19-year-old but the 90-year-old; it has to be easy to use; it should be in many languages; it should be – the important thing is we have to tie each response to a piece of ground, to where they live. So we can’t just say, “Come and fill out the census.” We have to send you an ID, so that we can tie your response to the piece of land that you live, because that’s what needed for this apportionment, for this drawing of the districts, so that everybody has the same number of people in the district. And that means we have to contact you somehow, so I think we’ll probably still mail you a letter, assuming the Postal Service is still around, but we want to move to the internet for many reasons. We think it’ll improve response and it will save money.
One additional question. Do you have some estimate how much money will save using this new form?MR. WEINBERG:
The short form itself? Well -- QUESTION:
And mailing (inaudible.)MR. WEINBERG:
We know because we had to stand up the American Communities Survey itself. That’s roughly $1.8 billion over the 10-year period, so that – there was a tradeoff. We said we’d get more data more often but – and we’ll make the census simpler. So I can’t really point to a dollar saving from just the short form. QUESTION:
Okay. Thank you. MR. WEINBERG:
Yeah. Go ahead. QUESTION:
Jane Morse, IIP, U.S. Department of State. I know that certain ethnic groups weren’t happy that there wasn’t a write-in, a line to be able to have some count on their representation in the U