WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The extensive decennial counting of heads in the United States got off to a start in the ice-covered Alaska Tuesday.
U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham kicked off the 2020 Census in the remote Alaska Native village of Toksook Bay by counting the first person and household in the nation's once a decade population measuring process.
He delivered the first 2020 Census questionnaire to a household selected by village leaders and enumerated the residents living there.
While the 2020 Census count starts in other parts of the nation only in March, the reason why it officially starts with a special operation in Toksook Bay and other remote areas such as Anchorage and Fairbanks is because of the region's demographic and geographic peculiarities.
Toksook Bay is a remote fishing village on the coast of southwestern Alaska. Census takers must get a head start in rural, remote areas when the ground is frozen and befoer the advent of the spring, when residents leave to fish, hunt and seek out warm-weather jobs.
While the rest of the nation will be invited to respond for the first time to the 2020 Census online, by phone, or by mail, more than half of households on tribal lands across the country have nontraditional addresses where the Census Bureau can't mail a census form.
With no at-home mail delivery and a short window to respond before seasons change, receiving an invitation this way would be nearly impossible for remote Alaska residents. This is why the Census Bureau opted the best way to count people living on their lands - census takers will visit people at home and will fill out their questionnaire in person.
In other parts of the country, invitations by online, by phone, or by mail to respond will reach an estimated 145 million households between March 12 and March 20.
In order to count every person, the Census Bureau is building a team by hiring hundreds of thousands of local census takers to knock on doors of households that don't self-respond to the census.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the projected population of the country last month.
It will be 330,222,422 on January 1, 2020, marking an increase of 1,991,085, or 0.61 percent, from New Year's Day 2019.
April 1, 2020, will be the reference day used for the United States Census of 2020.
Mandated by the Constitution, the U.S. has counted its population every 10 years since 1790.
Census results help determine how billions of dollars in federal funding flow into states and communities each year.
The results of the 2020 census will determine the number of seats for each state in the House of Representatives, which mirrors the number of delegates for each state in the Electoral College, for elections in 2022 to 2030.
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