A census is not primarily a head count. The number itself matters less than what is attached to it: the allocation of seats in a legislature, the distribution of funding for roads and schools, the boundaries of electoral districts. All of these are derived from the count, which is why an undercount in one area is not merely a statistical inaccuracy but a transfer of resources and representation away from the people who were missed. Those people are, reliably, the ones already hardest to reach, which means the error does not scatter randomly. It falls in the same places each time.
It can be inferred that the author would consider an undercount to be
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Correct answer to question 58 (Paragraph Comprehension): a problem of fairness rather than of arithmetic
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The passage insists an undercount is not merely a statistical inaccuracy but a transfer of resources and representation, and stresses that it falls on the same people each time. That framing is about fairness, not arithmetic.
Updated: November 2026
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