A great deal of attention has been focused on our current economic deficit, but there is something we can do to grow our funds — without raising taxes or cutting needed programs: We can increase funds to the state by ensuring that all of Hawaii's people are counted in the 2010 census.

Overall, $450 billion in federal support is distributed annually through programs that use census data to determine state and local funding allocations — about $1,500 for every man, woman, and child nationwide. Every resident not counted in the census costs his or her state hundreds of dollars per year in lost federal revenue. A recent Brookings Institution study calculated that Hawaii's share of the aforementioned funds in fiscal 2008 was about $1.5 billion, or $1,181 for every person in our state.

The University of Hawaii's Center on the Family and Hawaii KIDS COUNT is concerned about our children being accurately counted. This is because an undercount would deprive state and local governments of critically needed revenues at a time of severe fiscal strain, reducing the funding available for Head Start, food stamps, foster care subsidies, children's health insurance, Medicaid, highway construction, school aid, and more.

Moreover, planners rely upon census data to make crucial decisions, such as how many schools to build, how many day care centers to open and how many kindergarten teachers to hire. Children in poor households are the most likely to be missed, so an undercount typically ends up hurting those who need the most help.

Why are young children missed in the census counts? They are more likely than other age groups to live in households with characteristics associated with low response rates on the census: poverty, belonging to an ethnic or racial minority, very large family size and a non-native or non-English speaking head of household. Nationwide, children under age 5 are 23 percent more likely than the rest of the population to live in areas the U.S. Census Bureau has designated as “;hard to count.”;

In Hawaii, 22.7 percent of the state's 77,186 children under age 5 — 17,525 children — reside in hard-to-count areas.

After a severe undercount in 1990, the Census Bureau mobilized a multifaceted program to reduce the nonresponse rate, which included tracking down families who did not return census forms by mail and launching a “;Census in Schools”; initiative to reach families with school-age children. As a result, the total undercount declined substantially in 2000. However, these efforts paid scant attention to the age bracket with the most serious under-representation — children under 5.

This year, census forms were mailed out in mid-March, and the count will be completed by July. There's still time for us to boost the count of our youngest children. Everyone can help:

» Political leaders can get the “;be counted”; message to residents in their districts.

» Service providers who interact with young children and their families can answer questions about the census and encourage participation.

» Hospitals and health clinics can work with women who have given birth recently to record their new babies in the census.

» Providers of homeless shelters and services can help their hard-to-reach clients complete and return their census forms.

» Preschool teachers and family child care providers can remind parents to count all members of their families.

If children aren't counted accurately, Hawaii will not get a clear picture of its communities, and we will forgo our fair share of available federal funds. We need to get counting to better serve our children in the years to come.

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Sylvia Yuen, Ph.D., is director of the Center on the Family at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.