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Population censuses constitute the basis of public resource allocation and political
representation globally. This paper shows that census forms commonly generate
incentives for enumerators to disproportionately omit members of larger
households. Using microdata from 254 censuses, we estimate that this leads to
undercounting in at least 60% of censuses. Omission is concentrated in poor
countries where 0.6% of the population is missing. Within countries, poor
households are missing three times as many members as rich ones, leading to
larger undercounts in poorer regions. We illustrate how this translates into
systematic underfunding of public services and political underrepresentation in
poor regions.
