More than half of the households in Connecticut have already been counted in the 2020 U.S. Census.
As of Tuesday, 50.3 percent of the state’s households had already responded to the census online, by mail or by phone. Compared to other states in the northeast, Connecticut was at the very top of the response rate list. The state’s response rate was also above the national average, which stands at 48.6 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“We should be very proud of that especially since we’ve been going through the COVID-19 pandemic and we are hot spot,” said Connecticut Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz, who is leading the state’s effort to get people counted.
Bysiewicz said she got started over a year ago to begin recruiting hundreds of organizations and communities across the state to create what are called Complete Count Committees.
“They are working at the local level and this is really something that gets done at the grassroots level,” Bysiewicz said.
From disaster relief money to hospital funding to Medicaid funding to federal student loan aid, as well as nutrition programs like SNAP, which is being utilized by thousands of Connecticut families during the coronavirus pandemic, Bysiewicz said that nearly $11 billion in federal funding is riding on the state’s census numbers.
“We expect more families to be relying on SNAP because now we have more than 339,000 people that have applied for unemployment,” said Bysiewicz.
Local
Earlier this week, the U.S. Census Bureau extended the deadline to complete your census - by mail or phone or online - to October 31, 2020.
The process of completing the census online take just a few minutes for most households. To be directed to the census website, click here.
