Census Bureau U S

Rep. Dan Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of a House subcommittee on the census, called Tuesday for a review and possibly a recount in 15 local offices--including East Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Commerce--where he said he suspects possible fraud. A computer-generated study by the Census Bureau showed unusually rapid completion of the count in the California offices.

To nearly one-third of Orange County's households, the glass is not just half-full, it's completely full. An estimated 262,900 households rated their neighborhood a perfect "10," according to a newly-released federal housing survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1994. "This doesn't surprise me," said Chuck Smith, executive vice president of the East Orange County Assn. of Realtors, who sees the findings as further evidence the region is emerging from the worst recession in 50 years.

The federal census in the year 2000 will have fewer questions and the traditional mail survey will be supplemented by forms available at convenience stores, shopping centers, churches and homeless shelters as the government tries to persuade an increasingly reluctant public to cooperate in the vast count, officials said Wednesday.

Orange County's population increased by more than 20,000 people last year, while the population of neighboring Los Angeles County grew by a scant 1,419 residents, the smallest expansion for Los Angeles County in more than 20 years, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. Without an influx of more than 100,000 immigrants last year, Los Angeles County would have posted a substantial population decline.

In a setback for Los Angeles, New York and other major cities, the Supreme Court said Wednesday that federal officials need not adjust the 1990 census to make up for an apparent undercount of blacks and other minorities. Two years ago, a federal appeals court in New York said that the government violated the Constitution's equal-treatment guarantee by using census figures that "disproportionately undercount" the poor and minorities.

Americans are going without health insurance for longer periods, according to a government survey. The Census Bureau, which tracked how long people went without health insurance from February, 1991, to September, 1993, said Monday that the average spell lasted 7.1 months. That was up from six months for those who had no insurance sometime during the same 1990-92 period.

Since 1787, when the Constitution called for a count of everybody every 10 years, census takers have hit the streets in search of America itself--specifically, those citizens who didn't return census forms. But if the government's Panel on Census Requirements gets its way, many of these temporary census takers will have to look elsewhere for work during the next head count, slated for 2000.

President Clinton plans to nominate Martha Farnsworth Riche of the private Population Reference Bureau to head the Census Bureau.