We recently released a paper focused on the undercount of young Hispanic children at the county level in the Census**. That publication provided data for the 50 largest counties. This blog provides data for more individual counties analyzed in that publication.
We don’t feel comfortable providing data for all counties, because the net undercount rates for a lot of smaller counties are not precise or reliable. Because the numbers were small, rates for some of the smaller counties ended up being 50 to 100 percent. When these counties are grouped together, as was done in the paper, the errors counter-balanced each other. However, showing data for all the individual small counties would leave a lot of people with a misperception of the real likelihood of young Hispanic children being missed in their county.
This blog is an attempt to provide data for more individual counties, without providing data that is misleading or unreliable.
In assembling this list of individual counties, we established a threshold for inclusion in the table. That threshold was having at least 1,000 young Hispanic children. The 1,000 young children is the threshold used by the Census Bureau in releasing data for individual counties for the total young child population***. With this threshold, there were 521 counties where we feel we can show data.
There are 521 counties listed in Table A. The 521 counties represent about one-sixth of all counties in the country. The total net undercount for these 521 counties was 350,982. The 521 counties account for 94 percent (of 350,982/375,200 = 94 percent) young percent of the total national net undercount of young Hispanic children in the 2020 Census.
*Larger counties are those with at least 1,000 young Hispanic children in the Vintage 2020 Population Estimates.
**O’Hare W.P. and Quiros, S. (2025). “Analysis of 2020 Census Net Undercount of Young Hispanic Children by County,” January, Posted on the Count All Kids website https://countallkids.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Analysis-of-2020-Census-Net-Undercount-of-Young-Hispanic-Children-by-County.pdf
***U.S. Census Bureau (2024). Exploring Undercount of Young Children in the 2020 Census by County, Eric Jensen, and George M Hayward, April https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/04/children-undercount.html
