Census Overestimated ‘Same-Sex’ Households

Census Overestimated ‘Same-Sex’ Households – Sweetness & Light

From some pickers of nits at the Chicago Tribune:

Census Bureau backtracks on number of same-sex households

By William Mullen
September 27, 2011

Mistakes made on some 2010 census forms led the U.S. Census Bureau to report an “artificially inflated” number of same-sex households in August, census officials said Tuesday.

While the Census Bureau reported 901,997 same-sex households nationally in August, new calculations of the 2010 census indicate there are 648,464 such households.

They were only off by 39%. But who’s counting? It’s not like it’s a census or anything.

Besides, if you don’t jack up the numbers your special interest group might not get all the federal benefits it’s due.

In Illinois, the same-sex household total was revised downward from 32,469 to 23,049. The revised state number is less than 1 percent more than the 22,887 figure reported in the 2000 census. Using the original census figures, the Tribune in August reported the statewide increase was 40 percent.

“What went wrong is something that we have known about for some time,” said UCLA School of Law demographer Gary Gates, whom the census called in to review the revised figures for accuracy.

Unclear census forms led heterosexual couples in some cases to check boxes identifying themselves as same-sex couples, Gates said…

Couples probably check the box thinking it is is asking if they have ‘some sex.’ (Newlyweds, anyway.)

“As scientists, we noticed the inconsistency and developed the revised estimates to provide a more accurate portrait of the number of same-sex couples,” Robert Graves, director of the Census Bureau, said in a statement.

‘Census scientists’ sound a lot like ‘global warming scientists.’

Which raises the question, why are the Census Bureau even ‘estimating’ in the first place? We thought the idea of a census was to actually count heads. (Or whatever.)

Gates said similar mistakes may have been made in 2000.

“In August, the figures showed the increase nationally in same-sex households to be in the neighborhood of 50 percent, and I really think that increase is probably about right if we had corrected figures for the 2000 census too,” he said…

Too late. They’ve already got their federal grants.

By the way, if two maiden aunts live together, does the government count them as a same sex household?

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