The Twenty-third United States Cen­sus, known as Cen­sus 2010 or the 2010 Cen­sus, is the cur­rent national cen­sus in the United States. National Cen­sus Day was April 1, 2010 and is the point of ref­er­ence date used in fill­ing out the form.As required by the United States Con­sti­tu­tion, the US cen­sus has been con­ducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 United States Cen­sus was the pre­vi­ous cen­sus completed.

Cen­sus forms began to be deliv­ered March 15, 2010. Although the ques­tion­naire used April 1 as the point of ref­er­ence date as to where a per­son was liv­ing, an insert dated March 15, 2010 included the fol­low­ing printed in bold type: “Please com­plete and mail back the enclosed cen­sus form today. As of April 1, the national return rate was 52%. The Cen­sus Bureau web­site states it will no longer use a long form for the 2010 Cen­sus. In sev­eral pre­vi­ous cen­suses, one in six house­holds received this long form, which asked for detailed social and eco­nomic infor­ma­tion. The 2010 Cen­sus will use only a short form ask­ing ten basic ques­tions, includ­ing name, sex, age, date of birth, race, and home­own­er­ship status.

Detailed socioe­co­nomic infor­ma­tion col­lected dur­ing past cen­suses will con­tinue to be col­lected through the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nity Sur­vey. The sur­vey pro­vides data about com­mu­ni­ties in the United States on a yearly basis rather than once every 10 years. A small per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion on a rotat­ing basis will receive the sur­vey each year, and no house­hold will receive it more than once every five years.