44 big cities that are way behind on filling out the 2020 Census

Some large US cities only have had about half of their households self-respond to the Census so far.Boston Globe / Contributor/Getty Images

• The 2020 Census is well underway, with only a few more months to self-respond to the once-a-decade count before the end-of-October deadline.
• Across the US, 62.1% of households have filled out the form as of July 13.
• The census count determines political representation, government funding, and an accurate picture of America's communities for the next ten years.
• Business Insider decided to look at the self-response rates for cities with at least 100,000 people to see where Americans still need to catch up on filling out the census.
• Hartford, Connecticut, has the lowest self-response rate of these larger cities, at 43.4%.

The deadline for filling out the 2020 US Census is October 31, and although the Census Bureau has made a big effort to make it easier for people to ensure they're counted, self-response rates in some areas across the US are still low.

The coronavirus pandemic has made it somewhat more difficult for the Census Bureau to get an accurate count. For instance, the Bureau had to temporarily suspend field operations and training early on during the outbreak, but the government agency has since announced it will resume in-person follow-up with some non-responding households this month. The Bureau has also pushed back deadlines to ensure there is ample time for every household to be counted.

The census count is extremely important to communities across the country because it will help determine political representation and government funding for the next ten years. The decennial count also provides a hopefully comprehensive and accurate picture of America's changing population.

The count is used to allocate seats in the US House of Representatives for the next decade, as well as state and local legislatures. Additionally, it is used to determine billions of dollars in federal funding, including for programs like daycare, hospitals, Medicaid, and school lunches. The decennial Census count is also one of the core tools public and private researchers alike use to understand America's demographic makeup.

Some areas still have low completion rates, including Chicago. To encourage residents to fill out their census forms, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said a "Census Cowboy" will visit 10 communities within the city that have low response rates. Chicago has a self-response rate of 54.7% as of July 13.

Because the self-response deadline for the decennial count is just a few months away in October, we decided to look at response rates at the city level.

We used household response rates published on the Census Bureau's website. Rates can be found at the state-, city-, and county-level, among other geographic divisions. We focused on cities with a population of at least 100,000 that had the lowest overall self-response rates as of July 13. All the cities on our list had self-response rates well below the national rate of 62.1%, marking them as falling behind other areas.

Of these large cities, only four had a self-response rate of at least 80%. Centennial, Colorado, had the highest rate, where 81.3% of households have already completed the census. On the other end of the spectrum, Hartford, Connecticut, had just a 43.4% completion rate, and Newark, New Jersey, was at just 44.4%, making those the two lowest rates among US cities with at least 100,000 residents.

Read on to see which cities had the lowest self-response rates. We also included the city's rates of completing the census by internet, as opposed to by mail or phone, as of July 13.