This is the 23rd time in its history the country has tried to count every person living within its borders.
“When you receive your 2010 census, please fill it out and mail it back,” said Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves in a statement. “It’s one of the shortest forms in our lifetime with just 10 questions very much like the questions James Madison and Thomas Jefferson helped craft on the very first census.”
If every person mailed his or her census form back, it would save the country $1.5 billion, according to the Census Bureau.
When people do not return the forms, census workers must try to find them for an interview. The constitutionally mandated count is used to allocate federal money to states and to allocate congressional seats to states.
Individual answers are confidential.
The first head of the Census Bureau was founding father Thomas Jefferson.
