A redistricting advocacy group says a little-noticed part of the Census Bureau’s proposed 2030 residence rules could make college towns appear much smaller than they are. The National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) argues that tying a person’s “usual residence” to tax records would leave out many students who file no return of their own or are claimed on a parent’s return elsewhere.
The public comment period on the proposal closed Monday, Nov. 2.
What the Proposal Says
The Commerce Department’s proposed rule, published Sept. 10, defines a person’s usual residence as where they have lawfully spent the most days between Jan. 3 and April 1 of a census year. It adds that the residence “should be consistent with, and evidenced by, their tax records (e.g., tax returns, W-2 forms).”
The Bureau says it intends to consider tax records filed after April 1 where they bear on that period. It also says its reliance on tax and other administrative records will be “situation dependent,” weighing each data element’s purpose, timing and reliability. The proposal has a separate provision for dependents. Those with a consistent residence apart from their providers would be counted at that separate residence, while others would be counted at their providers’ home.
Higher education groups have already objected to other parts of the proposal. As previously reported, 19 associations led by the American Council on Education asked the Bureau to withdraw it. They warned it could leave out international students and scholars and bar questions on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
NRF’s Analysis
NRF compared 2023 IRS data on individuals and the dependents they claim with Census Bureau American Community Survey estimates. The IRS data totaled about 292 million people, against about 337 million in the survey data, a gap of roughly 45 million. NRF notes that many factors drive the gap, including low-income citizens who are not required to file and incarcerated people.
College towns stood out, the group says. Across the 38 largest flagship and land-grant universities in counties where undergraduates make up more than 10% of the population, IRS individuals averaged 73.5% of the survey estimate. In all other counties the average was 85.8%.
The group’s table of select college towns shows wider gaps. Radford City, Virginia, home to Radford University, had 9,710 IRS individuals against a population of 16,969, or 57.2%. In Tompkins County, New York, where Cornell is located, the figure was 66.3%, or 69,240 against 104,453. Clarke County, Georgia, home to the University of Georgia, was at 62.6%. NRF says some counties lose as much as 30% to 40% of their population in the IRS data.
NRF warns that census data steers large amounts of federal funding, so undercounts could hurt both college towns and their universities. It also says towns with many international students could be hit twice, given the proposed changes to how noncitizens are counted.
Limits and Open Questions
NRF calls its analysis preliminary and says the proposal is ambiguous about implementation. The comparison also does not model how the Bureau would actually use tax records. The Bureau says it maintains separate statistics apart from those used for apportionment, which may bear on NRF’s funding argument. The rule itself covers only apportionment.
The proposal also notes that, until the 1950 census, college students were counted at their parents’ homes.
