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Social Science and the U.S. 2020 Census

The National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics seeks nominations for members of an ad hoc consensus study panel — sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau — to review and evaluate the quality of the 2020 Census.

Could the 2020 iteration of the United States Census, the constitutionally mandated count of everyone present in the nation, be the last of its kind?

Census data can be pretty sensitive – it’s not just how many people live in a neighborhood, a town, a state or […]

The 2020 census is fraught with uncertainty for a variety of reasons, including a lack of money, a growing distrust in government and the months of debate over the now-dropped citizenship question – which the Census Bureau itself called a major barrier to participation.

The 2020 Census will count fewer Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, Asian Americans and Americans of Hispanic or Latino origin than actually live in the U.S. That will mean less public money for essential services in their communities, and less representation by elected officials at the state and federal levels.

In an age where issues of ethnicity and identity matter, as well, as in the United States, political representation, the import and impact of censuses, along with how they are structured, carried out and analyzed, matters greatly. And with the U.S. Census being conducted this year – today, April 1, is Census Day, although coronavirus-marred collection of data will continue until August 14 – this is an apt time to talk with author Andrew Whitby about censuses past, present and future.

There are three groups that have consistently posed problems to the U.S. census throughout history and continue to spark debate to this day: military members, Mormon missionaries and prisoners.

Counties with large universities depend heavily on student responses to the decennial census, because the census counts determine the levels of federal funding communities receive. And if those students are counted as being there …?

 The American Library Association is preparing academic libraries for the U.S. Census — the decennial count of every person living within the […]

Census 2020 is far from the first census to set off bitter political fights. One hundred years ago, results from Census 1920 initiated a decadelong struggle about how to allocate a state’s seats in Congress. The political arguments were so bitter that Congress eventually decided they would not use Census 1920 results.

The concept of the labor force describes a person’s employment status, and like all U.S. Census Bureau definitions, the terminology is quite specific. The labor force consists of all people 16 years of age or older who are working (employed), are not working but are actively seeking work (unemployed)…

When most Americans think of the census, they think of the 10-year or decennial census that is used to gather basic data about the total population. The decennial census is an actual count of people and housing units, and it serves as the baseline for measuring and generating other census data-sets…

Geographer Frank Donnelly notes that census geography and maps are not automatically reliable – they can be used to intentionally skew research findings.

The social science community has a large stake in the accuracy of the U.S. Census for the community’s contued research. Here, law professor Jonathan Entin discusses the legal controversy swirling around the impact a question on citizenship has on the census, something the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing about this week.

In the current volume of ‘The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,’ the editors ask: is the current census ethno-racial classification system doing a good job? Does it accurately reflect who we are, enabling us to track important social phenomena? Does it provide statistics helpful to understanding demographic dynamics and who we are likely to become in the years ahead?

The 2020 U.S. Census is still two years away, but experts and civil rights groups are already disputing the results. Professor Emily Merchant’s research on the international history of demography demonstrates that the question of how to equitably count the population is not new, nor is it unique to the United States.

UPDATED: Many academic groups that use U.S Census data for research fear the negative effects of including a question about citizenship on the 2020 count. “Adding a new citizenship question to the 2020 Census would destroy any chance for an accurate count, discard years of careful research, and increase costs significantly,” wrote The Leadership Conference, an umbrella group.

Our Howard Silver looks over some of the personnel changes and rhetoric coming from the White House to see what lies down the road for U.S. government support of social and behavioral science and data collection.

UPDATED: The National Science Board hopes it can muster support to save a question in the annual American Community Survey that tells us how many undergrads are taking science and research degrees. And a suite of questions on marriage trends is also facing the ax.

Survey researchers are increasingly unable to get people to respond to surveys. This is a real worry because nonresponse can lead to biased research and because nonresponse poses a significant threat to the federal statistical system in its entirety.

Federal surveys have been getting more expensive to administer, in part because the number of people who actually respond to surveys has been progressively declining.