A new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts' Philadelphia Research Initiative found that Philadelphia was way behind other major cities in mounting the extent of local outreach and awareness campaign for the 2010 Census, which is significant as per experts.

Tricia Enright, deputy chief of staff to Mayor Nutter, accepted that no formal announcements have been made in Philadelphia about Census awareness.

The Pew study reported that 7 out of 11 cities already appointed or hired by census coordinators began work by early last month.

3 other states- Boston, Chicago and Detroit- already have financial and organizational groups supporting them.

Ensuring accurate local count becomes a municipal self-promotion campaign, though the census is done by the federal government.

The immigrants are particularly suspicious of the count despite the promise of anonymity since they fear that the count could cause their relatives to be deported.

Joseph J. Salvo, New York City's population division chief and a sociologist, said in the Pew study, "Nobody is expecting a good census in 2010. I'm not optimistic".

One of the impacts of the drop has been the decrease in the number of representatives the city sends to Congress. The city has three Congress members but only two have city-majority districts.