Here is another consequence of city residents leaving for other places during COVID-19: absent New York residents are not filling out Census 2020 forms at a good rate.

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Only 46 percent of Upper East Side households have filled out their census forms, according to a June 25 report circulated by the Department of City Planning’s chief demographer, Joseph J. Salvo — well below the neighborhood’s final response rate in 2010, and short of the current citywide rate of almost 53 percent…

Even if New Yorkers have asked the Postal Service to forward mail to their second homes, census forms are addressed to the household, not the individual, which — unless New Yorkers pay for premium forwarding — prevents the post office from including them with the forwarded mail…

Officials hope that many of the coronavirus evacuees will return by the end of October, the new extended deadline for final responses to the census. But with Manhattan parents now enrolling children in schools outside the city, it is not clear that the evacuees will return to New York City in time…

The pandemic has prompted census outreach workers to adjust their tactics, especially in trying to reach undocumented immigrants and residents in illegal housing, who may be fearful of sharing information with the government. In the heavily immigrant neighborhoods of North Corona and East Elmhurst, outreach workers have approached New Yorkers while they wait in lines at food distribution sites, for example.

A lot of effort goes into conducting the decennial census and the data collected is helpful to many. Trying to boost response rates to surveys in a world awash in data collection is a difficult task without a global pandemic. But, I imagine this might lead to some interesting lessons about data collection. Researchers need to have some flexibility in all cases as circumstances can change and plans may go awry. This could be a helpful story about how a large organization adapted in a difficult situation and maybe even made future data collection more robust.

While the article mentions the potential consequences for New York City, there is another consequence of the movement of people: would these wealthy New Yorkers boost the Census numbers elsewhere, provided that they fill out the forms about residing in other locations? Granted, they would still have to fill out a Census form but others might do that for them (if they are living with others) or they might fill out a form once they are more settled in.