Proposed changes to the 2030 U.S. census could cause sudden, artificial jumps in the nation's disease and death rates, according to a new opinion piece by Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Writing in STAT, Krieger argues the changes are untested, unconstitutional, and driven by partisan politics.
Three major changes are proposed: counting only citizens and lawful permanent residents; assigning people to the address where they stayed most between Jan. 3 and April 1, tied to tax records; and dropping questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Krieger says these rules would reduce and relocate population counts, hitting college students, retirees, people of color, and immigrants especially hard.
Because health rates are calculated by dividing cases by population, a smaller denominator would make rates rise even if the number of cases stays the same. Krieger warns this would rupture understanding of morbidity and mortality trends, distort federal funding formulas, and undermine surveys that depend on census sampling frames. The initial comment period was extended to Nov. 2 after public pushback.