Bureau Director Robert Groves said in a newsrelease Tuesday that Anchorage has one of the lowest rates of mailparticipation at 41 percent, significantly lower than the 46 percentfor the rest of the country.

He said the bureau is concerned because each household that fails tomail in a form has to be visited by a census taker at considerably moreexpense.

The forms are due to bemailed Thursday. In the 2000 census, 70 percent of Anchorage householdsreturned their forms by mail. The national rate was 72 percent.

Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala.; Miami; Jackson, Miss.; New Orleans;and several cities in Texas were also mentioned by the Census Bureauhas having low response rates.

Theparticipation rate in Anchorage as of Tuesday was 47 percent, in Mat-Suit was 36 percent and in the Kenai Peninsula it was 37 percent,according to the Census Bureau.