The Wall Street Journal’s Numbers Guy columnist, Carl Bialik, recently wrote a print column and blog posting about the limited amount of information available on the size of religious populations in the U.S. The Census Bureau is barred from asking about religious affiliation, but dozens of other countries do so in their own headcounts.
The BBC has an article stating that officials have given approval to including a question about caste on India’s 2011 census, a topic that was last asked about in 1931. For more background, see this posting on All Things Census, which includes links to earlier news stories about this controversial issue.
The Census Bureau’s recent announcement that it will return $1.6 billion to the U.S. Treasury in 2010 Census operational savings was widely covered, with stories by The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and NPR, among others. Here is the transcript of the news conference with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves that includes an update on the status of the 2010 Census budget and operations.