NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
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PANEL ON CENSUS REQUIREMENTS IN THE YEAR 2000 AND BEYOND
CHARLES L. SCHULTZE (Chair),
The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
MARGO ANDERSON,
Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
DOUGLAS M. DUNN,
Consumer Services, AT&T, Basking Ridge, New Jersey
IVAN P. FELLEGI,
Statistics Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
STEPHEN E. FIENBERG,
Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University
CHARLES P. KINDLEBERGER,
St. Louis Community Development Agency, St. Louis, Missouri
MICHEL A. LETTRE,
Maryland Office of Planning, Baltimore, Maryland
JAMES N. MORGAN,
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
WILLIAM A. MORRILL,
Mathtech, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey
RICHARD F. MUTH,
Department of Economics, Emory University
JANET L. NORWOOD,
The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.
EROL R. RICKETTS,
Center for Social Research, City University of New York*
TERESA A. SULLIVAN,
Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin
KARL TAEUBER,
Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
JAMES TRUSSELL,
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
BARRY EDMONSTON, Study Director
CONSTANCE F. CITRO, Senior Staff Officer
JUANITA TAMAYO LOTT, Research Associate
MICHELE L. CONRAD, Senior Project Assistant
MEYER ZITTER, Consultant
COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL STATISTICS 1993-1994
NORMAN M. BRADBURN (Chair),
National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago
JOHN E. ROLPH (Vice Chair),
Department of Information and Operations Management, School of Business Administration, University of Southern California
MARTIN H. DAVID,
Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison
JOHN F. GEWEKE,
Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
NOREEN GOLDMAN,
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
JOEL B. GREENHOUSE,
Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University
ERIC A. HANUSHEK,
W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, Department of Economics, University of Rochester
ROBERT M. HAUSER,
Department of Sociology and Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison
NICHOLAS JEWELL,
Program in Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
WILLIAM NORDHAUS,
Department of Economics, Yale University
JANET L. NORWOOD,
The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.
DOROTHY P. RICE,
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco
KEITH RUST,
Westat, Inc., Rockville, Maryland
DANIEL L. SOLOMON,
College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, North Carolina State University
MIRON L. STRAF, Director
Acknowledgments
The panel's report is the result of the efforts of many people. The panel was established under the auspices of the Committee on National Statistics. Miron Straf, director of the committee, was instrumental in developing the study and provided guidance and support to the panel and staff. The committee, with Burton Singer and, later, Norman Bradburn, as chairs, had responsibility for the establishment of the panel and for review of the final report. Three committee members devoted thoughtful hours to reading and commenting on the final report: John Geweke, Noreen Goldman, and Dorothy Rice. We also appreciate comments on the final report that we received from Tom Jabine and Bruce Petrie, members of the Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods; Duane Steffey, study director of that panel; and six anonymous reviewers selected by the report review committee of the National Academy of Sciences. The panel would like to acknowledge the contributions of Porter Coggeshall, Robert Hauser, and Henry Riecken, who supervised the National Research Council review of our report.
At the beginning of its activities, the panel was pleased to be briefed by U.S. Representatives Harold Rogers and Thomas C. Sawyer on their views of the decennial census and their thoughts on criteria for future censuses. We also thank Barbara Bryant, who was director of the Bureau of the Census during the initial phases of the panel's work, and Harry Scarr, who was acting director for the latter period of our work, for their presentations to the panel and their helpful assistance to our requests for information.
We received continuing cooperation and assistance from the staff and management of the Bureau of the Census, including in particular Charles Alexander, Art Cresce, Greg Diffendal, Jim Dinwiddie, Jerry Gates, Jay Keller, Joe Knott,
John Long, Robert Marx, Lawrence McGinn, Nampeo McKenney, Susan Miskura, Mary Mulry, Lorraine Neece, Janice Pentercs, Gregg Robinson, John Thompson, Robert Tortora, and Signe Wetrogan.
We acknowledge with gratitude the assistance we received from the many individuals, in addition to those from the Bureau of the Census, who met regularly with the panel: Katherine Wallman and Maria Gonzalez, Office of Management and Budget; TerriAnn Lowenthal, Shelly Wilkie Martinez, and George Omas, House Subcommittee on Census, Statistics, and Postal Personnel; David McMillen, Senate Subcommittee on Government Information and Regulation; and Bruce Johnson, Jack Kaufman, and Chris Mihm, General Accounting Office.
Special thanks are due to the large number of individuals and organizations who consulted with the panel about their requirements for census data, their perception of content needs, and their appraisal of alternative methods for collecting census data. We owe a considerable debt of thanks to these people, who are listed in Appendix N.
We also thank the consultants to the panel—Larry Barnett, Jonathan Entin, Ed Goldfield, Samuel Issacharoff, Daniel Levine, Evelyn Mann, Mary Nenno, and George Wickstrom—who provided drafts of background papers. We appreciate the assistance of Margaret Mikyung Lee, who prepared a Congressional Research Service report on legal issues concerning the census and discussed legal issues with the panel on several occasions. Philip Fulton of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics provided the panel with expertise on transportation data and assisted greatly with the preparation of Appendix G. Juanita Tamayo Lott coordinated the activities of the panel's working group on race and ethnicity data; she directed the preparation of Chapter 7 and Appendix K. Meyer Zitter was responsible for coordinating the panel's work on the needs for small-area data and the usefulness of administrative records for the census and for intercensal estimates. He helped to prepare background papers and supporting tables for Chapter 8 and Appendices A, B, I, J, K, and L.
Eugenia Grofman, associate director for reports in the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, was responsible for editing the report and made valuable suggestions about its structure. We acknowledge the contribution of her superb editing skills in the preparation of this report. Our report also benefited from a final editing by Christine McShane and Elaine McGarraugh, also of the commission staff.
No panel with a task as complex and as difficult to focus as ours could perform its duties without an excellent, well-managed staff. In particular, the overall report would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of three staff members. We are enormously indebted to Michele Conrad, senior project assistant, who cheerfully undertook any task requested by panel members. She was responsible for the panel's survey of state data centers. She prepared background papers on business as well as state and local needs for
census data, presented in the report as Appendices E and F. She also edited the materials that have become Appendix H. Constance Citro, senior staff officer, made major contributions to the panel's work. She coordinated two of the panel's working groups, one on census data requirements for reapportionment and redistricting and the other on the special requirements for census long-form information. She directed the preparation of Chapters 1 and 6 and Appendices A and C. More than this, she worked with the study director from beginning to end in reviewing and revising drafts of the report, offering intelligent and constructive advice on the panel's work, and helping on all the tasks needed to bring the report to publication. Finally, we are uniquely indebted to study director, Barry Edmonston, who managed the overall strategy for the panel's work, organized and managed a complex set of activities, and nudged us on to meet our deadlines. His intellectual contributions are embedded throughout our work.
I wish to close by expressing my profound appreciation to fellow panel members for their willingness to devote long hours and their special knowledge to the development and writing of the report. They have worked together well and patiently, a critical element in such a comprehensive review of the needs for the census. A number of panel members prepared background papers for our discussions. Some of their contributions appear in the appendices; others have been incorporated into the text.
Charles L. Schultze, Chair
Panel on Census Requirements in the Year 2000 and Beyond
Preface
In 1992 the Congress mandated that a study of the fundamental requirements for the nation's decennial census be undertaken by the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. The mandate was in part in response to the costs and large relative undercount of minority groups in the 1990 census: there were higher per unit costs than previous censuses and higher rates of coverage error (net undercount of the population) than in the 1980 census.
as specified by the legislation, the Panel on Census Requirements in the Year 2000 and Beyond, under the Committee on National Statistics, was established (Decennial Census Improvement Act of 1991, Public Law 102-125) to study:
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means by which the Government could achieve the most accurate population count possible; and
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consistent with the goal under paragraph (1), ways for the Government to collect other demographic and housing data.
In the words of the legislation, the panel was directed to consider such matters as:
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ways to improve the Government's enumeration methods, especially with regard to those involving the direct collection of data from respondents;
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alternative methods for collecting the data needed for a basic population count, such as any involving administrative records, information from
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subnational or other surveys, and cumulative or rolling data-collection techniques;
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the appropriateness of using sampling methods, in combination with basic data-collection techniques or otherwise, in the acquisition or refinement of population data, including a review of the accuracy of the data for different levels of geography (such as States, places, census tracts and census blocks);
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the degree to which a continuing need is anticipated with respect to the types of data (besides data relating to the basic population count) which were collected through the last decennial census; and
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with respect to data for which such a need is anticipated whether there are more effective ways to collect information using traditional methods and whether alternative sources or methodologies exist or could be implemented for obtaining reliable information in a timely manner.
With respect to each alternative proposed, the panel was directed to include:
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an evaluation of such alternative's relative advantages and disadvantages, as well as an analysis of its cost effectiveness; and
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for any alternative that does not involve the direct collection of data from individuals (about themselves or members of their household), an analysis of such alternative's potential effects on (i) privacy; (ii) public confidence in the census; and (iii) the integrity of the census.
Our mission was to respond to Congress's interest in rethinking the census, both the requirements for the data currently collected in the census and methods of conducting the census at less cost and with improved coverage.
Our panel approached its task in several ways. We worked closely with Census Bureau staff to understand the cost structure of the census and the reasons for cost escalations since 1970. We also worked with Census Bureau staff to model the likely cost implications of various changes to census methodology. We reviewed the available literature and consulted with others in the field on the pros and cons of different ways of conducting the census, including radical changes, such as conducting a sample census or basing the census entirely on administrative records; fundamental reforms of current census methodology, such as the use of sampling to follow up nonresponding households; and numerous changes in census procedures.
We also met with a wide range of user groups to understand their requirements and uses for census data and the likely consequences of no longer collecting the items they now use or of collecting those items by some other means. We conducted two in-depth case studies of census data use, one for transportation research and planning and the other for housing research and planning. We did not, however, review the content of the census questionnaire on an item-by-item basis. No outside panel can substitute for the process by which data users, most importantly, federal government agencies, debate the relative merits of
including in the census an item on, say, commuting, versus an item on, say, disability or national origin. We did review the evidence on whether the content of recent censuses, taken as a whole, has contributed to such problems as rising costs and coverage errors and whether there is a case on these grounds for reducing the number of items.
As part of its response to the congressional mandate and at the specific request of the Department of Commerce and the Bureau of the Census, the Committee on National Statistics convened a separate Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods to conduct a complementary study. In addition to these two panels, the Department of Commerce established an extensive advisory structure for the census, consisting of a policy committee of federal agency officials with needs for census data, a technical committee of knowledgeable staff, and an advisory committee with members from outside organizations with a stake in the census.
Our review of possible census methodologies overlaps in some respects the work of the Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods. That panel's report and this one cover some of the same ground, but from differing perspectives. The Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods focused primarily on technical issues of implementation and evaluation of promising methodologies. Our panel focused on issues of the cost structure for the census, ways to achieve the most accurate population count, and requirements for census content. Both emphases are important, and we note that on major issues of needed methodological improvements the two panels reached very similar conclusions. (The final report of the Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods, Counting People in the Information Age, was published in 1994.)
Our panel (in contrast to the Panel to Evaluate Alternative Census Methods) devoted considerable attention to questions of census data use, including the rationale for users' needs for census information and whether those needs could be satisfied by some means other than the census itself. Early in our deliberations, we investigated the legal requirements for census data to support reapportionment and redistricting at the federal, state, and local levels of government and whether those requirements ruled out any of the changes in census methodology that have been proposed. We also reviewed the legal requirements for census data to support other program and policy needs of federal agencies. Some of our early findings were presented in an interim report in May 1993 and a letter report in November 1993; these are integrated in this report.
We urge prompt consideration of our findings and recommendations by Congress and the Census Bureau so that the needed changes in the census process can be made in time to realize their full benefits for the 2000 census.
Charles L. Schultze, Chair
Panel on Census Requirements in the Year 2000 and Beyond