(Last month a group of 58 social scientists and government officials, sponsored by the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies, met to consider ways of improving the enumeration of non-white minority groups, such as Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican-Americans in the 1970 Census.

The two-day Conference on Social Statistics and the City noted that the Census was explicitly designed to provide the basis for representation in the House of Representatives, but had come to provide the basis on which Federal funds are allocated in many areas.

The most significant paper presented at the Conference was by Jacob Siegel, chief of the Census Bureau's National Population and Estimates branch. He showed that one-tenth of the Negro population was missed in the 1960 Census and that among young Negro males the rate was as high as one in six.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, director of the Joint Center, spoke for the Conference in a letter to Carl D. Perkins, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee: "Such substantial undercounting of minority groups raises a new order of question. The census count is the basis on which legislation is apportioned and by which great sums of public funds are allocated. A member of a group significantly underrepresented and concentrated in special neighborhoods might well claim a violation of his Constitutional right to equal representation and protection of the law."

Earlier this week Siegel said that the Census Bureau was now planning to use "irregular, unusual devices" in the 1970 Census to overcome the short count of non-whites. He said the new tactics would include enlistment of shopkeepers, canvassing during early morning hours, and the saturation of some areas with census takers. The Bureau also intends to change its philosophy in ghetto areas by counting a maximum of residents instead of seeking to avoid duplication.

The following resolutions were passed by the Conference)

Improving Enumeration of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans

While American population statistics are among the very finest in the world, papers presented to the Conference have established beyond reasonable doubt that the Decennial Census, the Current Population Survey, and to a lesser degree, the Vital Statistics of the United States, seriously and significantly under-enumerate or under-estimate the size of the Negro, Puerto-Rican and Mexican-American populations. As much as 10 per cent of the Negro population may not have been counted in the 1960 Census, and there is considerable probability that the Puerto Rican and Mexican-American were similarly under-counted.

In 1960 as many as one Negro male in six within the age group of 20 to 39 years may have been omitted altogether.

In a modern society statistical information is not only a primary guide to public and private actions, in itself it profoundly influences patterns of thought and basic assumptions as to the way things are and the way they are likely to be. Were national statistics merely inadequate, but uniformly so, the nation would be at a disadvantage, but no special injury could be claimed by any region or group. As it happens, however, where American population statistics are inadequate, they will normally be found to be so in terms of the under-enumeration and under-estimation of minority groups, defined in terms of race, or national origin, and concentrated in specific neighborhoods, usually in densely populated central city areas. They are also, characteristically, defined by poverty. But a larger issue than simply of efficiency and convenience must enter the consideration of this subject. A constitutional issue enters.

Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution provides for the enumeration once each ten years for all persons residing within the United States. This enumeration is explicitly and primarily designed to provide the basis for representation in the House of Representatives. In the years since the adoption of the Constitution, the Census enumeration and other statistical programs, such as those conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have come to be the basis for a host of public activities, and most particularly provide the basis on which public funds are allocated in a whole range of government programs at the national, state, and local level. In some cases funds are allocated on a straight "head count" basis. In other cases, as for example the Economic Development Act, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and in the Model Cities legislation, public funds are allocated on the basis of population together with a range of special economic and other information collected by government agencies.

The record of these agencies, notably the Bureau of the Census, in gathering and compiling this information with the highest technical competence, the uttermost standards of impartiality and integrity, and at the most modest cost is a matter of national pride. Typically it has been the Census Bureau itself that has been the most diligent in discovering and analyzing the problems of gathering statistics relating to minority groups.

Nonetheless, the problem of underenumeration of minority groups is likely to persist unless it becomes a matter of more general concern. We believe that what were initially at least technical problems have by their very magnitude been transformed into social problems with powerful legal and ethical implications. Specifically, we hold that where a group defined by racial or ethnic terms, and concentrated in specific political jurisdictions, is significantly under-counted in relation to other groups, then individual members of that group are hereby deprived of the constitutional right to equal representation in the House of Representatives, and by inference in other legislative bodies. Further, we hold that individual members of such a group are thereby deprived of their right to equal protection of the laws as provided by Section I of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in that they are deprived of their entitlement to partake in Federal and other programs design-for areas and populations with their characteristics.

Injury, while general, is real; redress is in order. This would seem a matter of special concern to the nation in view of recent Supreme Court rulings establishing the one-man, one-vote principle in apportioning legislatures, and in view of the extensive Congressional activity in the establishment of programs designed to improve the economic and social status of just those groups that appear to be substantially under-represented in our current population statistics.

The Bureau of the Census and other government statistical agencies have set a superb standard of public accountability in calling attention to this problem themselves. We feel it is incumbent on the Congress to provide the Bureau of the Census, the National Center of Health Statistics, the Bureal of Labor Statistics and such other agencies as are concerned, with the funds necessary to obtain a full enumeration of all groups in the population, and also to gather the usual information on special and economic characteristics that is necessary to implement the laws of the nation.