Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency Sixth Edition (2017) / Chapter Skim
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Valuing Federal Statistics
Valuing Federal Statistics
Pages 25-32
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From page 25... ...
.21 Whether current spending on federal statistics, in total or as divided among individual statistical programs, is optimal in terms of the value of the statistics produced is not easily determined. Yet there are compelling justifications in terms of the uses of the data, which include political representation, economic decision making in the public and private sectors, administration of programs, scientific research, and contributions to public opinion and debate.
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Supreme Court (see McMillen, 2012; National Research Council, 1995:App.
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From page 27... ...
A public good must also be nonexcludable -- that is, it must be difficult for a business or other private entity to try to establish a market for such a good that is open only to those willing to pay the price. Federal statistics, similar to other public goods, such as the judiciary and national defense, satisfies the first component and practically speaking satisfies the second (see discussion in National Research Council, 1999:Ch.
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From page 28... ...
Monthly changes in the CPI are a major input to Federal Reserve Board decisions on short-term interest rates and financial decision making throughout the public and private sectors. By comparison, the BLS program to produce the CPI and other price series had an estimated budget authority of $216 million in fiscal 2016.24 Federal statistics also feed directly into allocations of billions of dollars of federal funds to states and local governments by use of legislated formulas.
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From page 29... ...
An example is an effort to comprehensively identify nonfederal uses of data from the American Community Survey by state and local governments, nongovernmental organizations, the media, and others (National Research Council, 2013a; see also National Research Council, 2007b:Ch.
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From page 30... ...
Census Bureau; and Science and Engineering Indicators from the National Science Board and National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.25 • Providing empirical evidence for developing and evaluating federal, state, local, and private-sector programs -- For example, the American Housing Survey, sponsored by the Office of Policy Development and Research in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and conducted by the Census Bureau, provides valuable data on housing condition and housing finance to inform housing policy (see National Research Council, 2008)
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From page 31... ...
data -- given that decision making rarely moves linearly from reviewing the evidence to framing appropriate policy alternatives to deciding among them.27 Moreover, a focus on specific policy decisions is too narrow for valuing investment in federal statistics. As one example, there is no immediately pending policy decision about the nation's rising income and wealth inequality and declining social mobility (see, e.g., Chetty et al., 2014, which used federal income tax data)
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From page 32... ...
. In turn, it is incumbent on federal statistical agencies to communicate the value of their programs to policy makers and others and to analyze the costs of their programs on a continuing basis so that they can ensure the best return possible on the tax dollars invested in them.
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