Elsie Eiler, 87, has been the sole resident of Monowi, Nebraska, for nearly 20 years. The town, if you can call it that, sits just south of the South Dakota border and is run entirely by Eiler. She is its mayor, clerk, hostess, and bartender. So, it came as a welcome surprise when Eiler found out this spring that someone else was around to help.
The Census Bureau’s 2020 report revealed that Monowi was home to not just one, but two people. But considering Eiler’s house is the only home in the entire village, she wasn’t convinced the second person really lived there. And it turns out, she was right: The second person listed in Monowi’s population was created by the bureau.
“What you’re seeing there is the noise we add to the data so you can’t figure out who is living there,” a Census Bureau spokeswoman explained to the Lincoln Journal-Star. “It protects the privacy of the respondent and the confidentiality of the data they provide.”
The spokeswoman clarified that the bureau didn’t create a second resident out of thin air; it merely shifted the resident from a different town in the county to Monowi.
“We take the same number of people, but we move them around,” the spokeswoman said. “When you look at it all the way out, it’s correct.”
The bureau may have had good intentions, but when you look all the way out, it’s never comforting when a government agency moves people around without telling anyone.
