According to an Az Central column contributed by Secretary of the U.S. Department of Congress Wilbur Ross, only 36.5% of American households have responded to the 2020 Census as of April 1.

36.5% means 50 million households, representing a third of the nation.

The importance of responding to the census, is that it affects the congressional seats and federal funds to your community which help pay for things like schools, hospitals, roads and emergency services.

According to the article, your personal information is encrypted and not shared with anyone else, including law enforcement.

If you haven’t received the paper questionnaire then expect delivery beginning April 8.

“Your state and nation thank you for taking action on behalf of your community by responding to the 2020 Census.” Ross stated in the column.

Now more than ever, we have time to fill out the census, according to the New York Post. The COVID-19 outbreak has also given us a national crisis where the census is crucial for the government’s function.

According to the article from the New York Post, the political stakes are so high in getting information from the census right, that the $16 billion, or $48 per head, that it is costing to collect the information, is very much worth it.

$1.5 trillion in federal money was appointed based on the information of the census data in this last decade.

Andrew Whitby, data scientist and author of “The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age” covers anything and everything to know about the census. 

“It’s this linchpin of the whole statistical system,” Whitby says. “I think it still plays an important part in framing the discussion about who we are as a country.”