Half of all Young African American Children in Very High Risk of Undercount Census Tract are located in just 30 counties

On February 5, 2020, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) released a database identifying the Census tracts in 689 large counties (all the counties with at least 5,000 children under age 5 in the 2010 Census) where young children (age 0 to 4) were most at risk of being missed in the 2020 Census. All of the Very High Risk of Undercount tracts had a predicted young child net undercount of 8.2 percent or more based on the most recent data available. The PRB research indicates that almost 1.2 million young African American children live in Very High Risk of Undercount Census tracts. This amounts to nearly half (48 percent) of all young African American children.

The table below shows that the 1.2 million young African American children most at risk of being missed in the 2020 Census are clustered in a relatively small number of counties. Half of all young African American children in the 689 counties living in Very High Risk of Undercount Census tracts are located in 30 counties, and one-quarter are in just 9 counties. These locations deserve special attention in terms of reducing the high net undercount of young children in the 2020 census.

You can find more resources below:

• PRB database
• This CUNY HTC mapping application gives a more granular look at the census tracts in these counties.
• This webinar gives more information about the database and using the database in the CUNY HTC mapping system.
• This paper describes the database and how to use it.