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Will This Year’s Census Be the Last?
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Will This Year’s Census Be the Last?

In the past two centuries, the evolution of the U.S. Census has tracked the country’s social tensions and reflected its political controversies. Now its future is in question.

Jill Lepore
The New Yorker, 2020
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Harvard history professor and New Yorker correspondent Jill Lepore provides a compelling overview of the ongoing 2020 United States census. She includes fascinating details about the census and its history, and compares its purpose and methods to those of other censuses throughout history, from those the Chinese emperors conducted to the countries that now follow the US model of conducting a census every 10 years. Lepore also cautions against Facebook and Google, which, she writes, gather more information about you than any government entity ever could.

Take-Aways

  • Taking a census dates back to the first millennium.
  • The United States has tried – and sometimes rejected – various strategies to count residents by race or ancestry.
  • The more questions the US census asks, the fewer people respond.

About the Author

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She hosts the podcast The Last Archive and is the author of This America: The Case for the Nation.

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