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Boston officials tell Senate city saw undercount in 2020; call for early LUCA work and improved ethnicity categories
Summary
City of Boston planning and demographic staff told the Senate committee the city estimated a 2020 undercount of roughly 25,000 residents (including about 7,000 group‑quarters), urged early LUCA engagement and raised concerns about race/ethnicity classification that can obscure Cape Verdean, Brazilian and other communities.
Boston — Boston demographic staff told a Massachusetts Senate committee the city identified a substantial undercount after the 2020 census and urged statewide support for early LUCA participation and improved race/ethnicity reporting.
Alvaro Lima, director of research and demographics for the City of Boston, told the committee the city estimated an undercount of about 25,000 residents in 2020; roughly 6,000–7,000 of those were group‑quarters residents that the city and Census Bureau later adjusted. "We did all that we could, but we end up with that situation," Lima said, describing outreach and documentation efforts the city used to reconcile student and institutional counts.
Lima described the city’s LUCA approach: Boston receives the bureau’s address master file under Title 13, compares it with municipal administrative records (assessor files, inspectional services, planning and building‑permit records), maps addresses parcel‑by‑parcel and returns documented corrections to the bureau. Lima said Boston’s in‑house team of demographers and GIS analysts spends months preparing and validating city submissions.
Boston officials also raised concerns about how the census treats race and ethnicity classifications. Lima told the committee some groups — including Brazilians and Cape Verdeans — do not appear cleanly in Census categories and may be reclassified during bureau tabulation, producing distortions at the neighborhood level. "The existing race and ethnicity categories often fail to capture the complex and lived realities of our communities," he said.
Senator Miranda asked how misclassification could affect service delivery. Lima said the issue affects public‑health planning and resource allocation because neighborhood‑level estimates drive program decisions and communities that appear smaller or different than reality may not receive adequate services.
Boston staff offered to provide the committee with their calculation details and the city's research on race and ethnicity tabulation. The city said it will continue to coordinate directly with the Census Bureau during LUCA and to share documentation with the state and municipal partners so local address and block maps are as complete as possible before the 2030 census.
