Give yourself a pat on the back, New York City. Despite a slight national decline in Census participation, your participation rate was up 2 percent from 2000. Hooray! Of course, that 2 percent increase only bumped the city up to 59 percent, which lags far behind the already unimpressive national average of 71 percent. So who was holding us back? We already know that Williamsburg hipsters are too busy being indifferent, forming electro-pop bands, and rooftop farming to mail back the ten-question form. Some poorer areas, like Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, didn’t do great either. But, perhaps surprisingly, some of the city’s wealthy elite were among the worst offenders: The least participatory Census tract in all of Manhattan, and close to the worst in the whole city, was a swath along Fifth and Madison Avenues that includes luxury apartments like Trump Tower. Granted, a doorman only has time to fill out so many Census forms, but still.
