Census Bureau to post return rates online, by ZIP

By Leon Stafford

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ten years ago, nine out of every 10 households in the Oak Grove community returned their census forms, the state's highest response rate.

Can the DeKalb County community pull it off again? Or will it be dethroned by residents in Fayette or Cobb or somewhere else in metro Atlanta?

In a first for the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal agency is posting form return rates. The information will be available online.

"You can go to our Web site, and you could type in your ZIP  code and you can see the return rates for neighborhoods," Robert Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, said in a recent interview.

No personal information from any form will be posted, he said.

Census forms began arriving in mailboxes last week. The 10-question survey is used to count all people living in the country, as required by the U.S. Constitution, and is used to determine federal funding and allocate congressional representation.