In an essay for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Anne Farris Rosen explains that the U.S. Census did once ask questions about religion, but has not done so since 1950, and in 1976 legislation forbid the Census Bureau from asking any question about religious beliefs or membership in a mandatory survey.

Children under age 5 were the most likely to be missed in the 2000 Census, and minority children were missed most often, according to a new working paper (PDF) from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The Senate has approved the nomination of University of Michigan survey researcher Robert Groves as director of the US Census Bureau. For more, see the New York Times article.

Getting an accurate count of minority and immigrant populations has always posed a challenge for the Census Bureau, but in 2010 the issue may be even more complex, as reported by the AP (see International Herald Tribune article).

The U.S. Census Bureau today submitted to Congress the subjects it plans to address in the 2010 Census, which include gender, age, race, ethnicity, relationship and whether you own or rent your home.

The Census Bureau also submitted its planned subjects for the American Community Survey (ACS) — a new yearly survey that eliminates the need for a decennial long-form questionnaire, while providing key socioeconomic and housing data about the nation’s rapidly changing population every year rather than once a decade.

For more, see the Census Bureau news release.

The Census Bureau plans to eliminate the “foster child” category from the 2010 Census and American Community Survey, according to commentary by William P. O’Hare on the Population Reference Bureau Web site.

The Census Bureau should test counting prison inmates at their permanent addresses instead of in prisons, according to an editorial in today’s New York Times. Prison populations can affect the political redistricting process by inflating population counts.