Category: American Community Survey

The Cannibalization of the Census Bureau

A local newspaper in Hagerstown, Maryland, published a surprising article that suggests the U.S. Census Bureau may be diverting funds from important surveys like the American Community Survey (ACS) in order to provide ongoing funding for activities supporting the 2020 Census, because Congress flat-lined FY 2018 decennial census funding that expires today.

This activity is, of course, permitted by an anomaly contained in the present Continuing Resolution and passed by Congress to keep the federal government running. But, the effect on the ACS is now clear.

In Census Budget Bills, Words Matter

In the early part of this decade, former Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) inserted language into a Senate appropriations bill report requiring that the 2020 Census’ overall, 10-year budget be no more than the costs of the previous 2010 Census. The bill report language became law. For better or worse, this led the U.S. Census Bureau to rely heavily on untested IT/internet options for the 2020 Census to cut costs.

By the middle of this decade, House Republicans were routinely inserting bill language into their versions of the annual census appropriations bill decrying the respondent “burden” to those who participated in the American Community Survey (ACS). Thankfully, the Senate never acceded to the House GOP’s bill language. Therefore, these attacks against the ACS never became law!

Now the Senate Appropriations Committee is proactively challenging the annual House bill report on the ACS. Thanks to information supplied by Census Project stakeholders, the Senate version of this year’s bill contains language stating the particular value of the ACS’s information to rural communities (which are Republican-dominated). The Senate language effectively negates the House action for FY 2018.

It’s for these reasons that the Census Project carefully reviews committee report language each year. Words matter!

 

 

This post has been updated to correctly refer to Sen. Mikulski. 

The Case for a Mandatory ACS: Count on Americans to Get It Right

By Terri Ann LowenthalCensus Project Co-Director Terri Ann Lowenthal

I have to start today’s census musing with an apology of sorts. It occurred to me, as I relay Appropriations Committee proceedings with tongue firmly in cheek, that some readers might think I do not like fish. Or, to be more precise, that I do not appreciate the importance of the fishing industry and coastal zone preservation. Au contraire, mon amis: I love the fishermen (oops, sorry; channeling you-know-who for a moment there), regularly consume fish, and live in a coastal state myself. It’s just that, when one is waiting patiently for a sign — any sign — that lawmakers appreciate the fundamental importance of a successful census and reliable data to the very foundation of our democracy, and the conversation keeps turning to counts of, um, fish, one can become despondent over the possibility that the nation’s largest, most inclusive, and most complex civic activity will get the short end of the budget stick. Again.

I had to get that off my chest before the Senate Appropriations Committee takes up the Census Bureau’s Fiscal Year 2017 funding bill (Commerce, Justice, and Science, or CJS) this week. As CJS Subcommittee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) helpfully noted when Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker testified in March, the largest chunk of new money for department programs is for 2020 Census planning.

The total request for the 2020 Census is $778 million; related activities, such as the new enterprise data processing system and geographic system updates, will support that effort. The Census Bureau also needs $251 million for the decennial census’ conjoined twin, the American Community Survey (ACS), to maintain a reliable sample size and continue researching new methods that will make it easier for the public to respond — a primary congressional goal.

Chairman Shelby told the Secretary that he is worried the Census Bureau is behind schedule in meeting its milestones to prepare for the census. Vice Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) reminded everyone that past enumerations have been plagued by “techno-boondoggles” (I did not make up that word), but that an accurate census remained the top goal. We will wait with baited (a fishing term!) breath to see how much money the committee is willing to spend on the bedrock of the nation’s democracy, but I find it hard to grasp how cutting the budget at this point will move the needle in the right direction.

At the March hearing, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) engaged the Commerce chief in the most substantive discussion about Census Bureau programs. In 2012, then-Rep. Lankford helped steer his House colleagues off the cliff into a data black hole, by championing an amendment to eliminate the ACS entirely. His distaste for the survey — whose results help guide the allocation of billions of dollars through other parts of the same appropriations bill, she said without a hint of irony — seems not to have waned; he offered, and then withdrew, an amendment to make ACS response voluntary during consideration of last year’s CJS bill.

This year, the Senator pressed Secretary Pritzker for information on Census Bureau research into making the ACS a more pleasant experience for households fortunate enough to be selected for the nation’s premier survey on the well-being of our communities. Okay, he didn’t exactly say it that way. Nevertheless, we haven’t heard much about the “2015 Summer Mandatory Messaging Test,” so perhaps it would be helpful to consider the findings before lawmakers think again about relieving put-upon Americans of their duty to answer a few queries confidentially for the common good.

Using the September 2015 ACS sample as a test-bed, the bureau evaluated the consequences of several design and messaging changes to ACS materials (e.g. envelopes, questionnaire, reminder postcard, etc.). The modifications included “softening” (by wording choice, visually, or both) or even removing the mandatory response tagline (which currently reads, “Your response is required by law.”) from some or all of the mailings, and highlighting the survey’s importance and benefits.

But before we look at the results, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane, to when lawmakers first got the itch to let Americans opt out of a civic duty that helps ensure a fair, equitable, and informed society. In 2003, at the direction of Congress, the Census Bureau tested the implications of making the ACS a voluntary survey. The outcome was not pretty: mail response rates would plunge; costs — and, ironically, the burden on the public — would rise significantly ($90+ million/year, according to the latest estimate), due to greater reliance on more costly telephone and door-to-door follow-up and the larger sample size necessary to compensate for lower response; and data reliability for smaller communities (towns! neighborhoods! rural counties!) and smaller populations (people with disabilities! veterans! ethnic subgroups!) would drop, perhaps beyond the point of acceptability.

The findings were so stark that Congress barely said another word about mandatory response for almost 10 years. (Our Canadian friends, however, apparently didn’t get the memo. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party pushed through a bill to make their census long form voluntary. Predictably, the renamed 2011 National Household Survey was a data disaster for less populous and geographically smaller areas. The outcry from the business community, municipal officials, and policy researchers was loud enough to prompt a swift restoration of the mandatory survey when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office last fall.)

The Census Bureau’s 2003 test and Canada’s experience provided consistent evidence of what Congress and the nation would lose if ACS response were voluntary. Never ones to be deterred by a universally panned idea, however, House Members voted three times to make ACS response optional; Senators, fortunately, refused to go along.

The Census Bureau is taking congressional concerns about the ACS’s perceived intrusiveness seriously. It has consulted with the best survey experts in the business and is researching ways to replace some survey questions with data from other government datasets (administrative records) and ask others less frequently. Then there is last year’s test of design modifications and different ways to convey that response is mandatory.

And whadda’ya know? The experimental design that strengthened the mandatory message and added a plug about the importance of the survey yielded the best outcome in terms of response rates, data reliability, and cost, even compared with the current materials. Self-response and final response rates were “significantly” higher, leading the bureau to project cost savings of $7.3 million per year and better data reliability (i.e. reduced margins of error in the data, which is, after all, derived from a sample). In fact, if the bureau continued to spend the same amount of money on the survey, it could increase the sample size by 4.7 percent, thereby reducing margins of error even more. (If the bureau reduced the sample size but maintained current data reliability, costs would drop even further.)

On the flip side, experimental designs that diminished the emphasis on mandatory response yielded, almost across the board, “significantly” lower response rates. If that were to happen, the Census Bureau would have to decrease the sample size by up to 12 percent, resulting in worse data, or increase the sample size by up to 11 percent to maintain data reliability, at an additional cost of up to $42 million. In other words, pick your poison: pay more, or risk more unusable data, all in the name of keeping the survey mandatory but not letting Americans in on the secret.

Here’s what I think. Most Americans are willing to do their part in support of a strong democracy and good governance. Tell them clearly and honestly why what you’re asking them to do is for the public good, and demonstrate that you don’t take their cooperation lightly and will not abuse the privilege, by continuously innovating and having some faith in your most important customer — the American people.

Congress, are you listening?

Gone Fishin’ (Come find me in 2021)

Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann LowenthalBy Terri Ann Lowenthal

I’m going fishing.

No, really, this makes perfect sense as I head into the twilight of my census advocacy career.

I’ve been listening to the House of Representatives consider the FY 2016 funding bill (H.R. 2578) that covers the U.S. Census Bureau and a whole lot of other, obviously more important, government activities. My ears perked up during opening debate, when I heard Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) emphasize the importance of “data collection” no less than 10 times. Then I realized he was talking about fishing stock assessments, conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under the Department of Commerce… which houses the Census Bureau. See, sometimes you have to shift around life’s organization chart just a little, and the world is your oyster.

Anyway, the real reason I’m considering early retirement is because, by the time our esteemed lawmakers finish with this massive funding bill in the next day or so, there won’t be any money left to take a census in 2020. Or, at least, a very good one.

You’d have thought a cut of more than 30 percent to the president’s budget request for 2020 Census planning and the American Community Survey (ACS) in the committee-passed bill was embarrassing enough. But that would mean you didn’t read the final line of my last blog post.

Sure enough, just two amendments into the floor action, another $100 million was gone from the Census Bureau account covering these two parts of the decennial census. Reps. Dave Reichert (R-WA) and William Pascrell (D-NJ), with enthusiastic support from colleagues on both sides of the aisle, transferred the money to the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants program. No one winced at the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the Census Bureau wouldn’t have enough money to continue modernizing the 2020 Census or to preserve the current ACS sample size. (And never mind that the Byrne JAG program and community policing initiatives rely, at least in part, on census and ACS data to allocate funding, target human resources, and understand community dynamics.)

Then Rep. Richard Nugent (R-FL) scooped up $4 million for veterans’ treatment courts. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) took another $17.3 million for programs that combat human trafficking, after solemnly assuring colleagues that the Periodic Censuses and Programs account did not pay for the constitutionally required population count, only the useless ACS. Um, whatever you say, congressman.

Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Culberson (R-TX) and Ranking Member Chaka Fattah (D-PA) did reject an amendment offered by Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) to shift five percent of the Census Bureau’s budget to enforce fair trade laws. Apparently, logging companies in the congressman’s district are having a hard time competing with their counterparts north of the border. Congress has a “constitutional responsibility” to protect Americans from unfair trade practices, Rep. Poliquin intoned. Before withdrawing his amendment, he had this gem of a parting shot: “I think jobs are more important than counting people.” I cannot make this stuff up.

On the bright side (always looking for a ray of sunshine amid the annual storm), several Democratic members — including Reps. Mike Honda (CA), Barbara Lee (CA), Nita Lowey (NY), and Mr. Fattah —warned the House during general debate about the dangerously low funding levels for the Census Bureau. But the appropriations bill will head to the Senate with nearly half a billion dollars less than the Administration requested for the account that funds the 2020 Census and ACS. Like full committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-KY) said at the start of debate, we have to reduce funding for “lower priority programs.”

The fun isn’t over. Rep. Poe will be back on the floor as the bill wraps up, offering his amendment to make response to the American Community Survey voluntary. But I might be packing up my rod and tackle box and looking for a gurgling stream somewhere. Because there might not be enough money for a modern, less costly census, and Congress has already said it won’t pay for a more expensive one. Just don’t look for me in Maine.

An ‘Opt-Out’ Democracy

Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann LowenthalBy Terri Ann Lowenthal

In March 2000, with the nation’s crown jewel of civic activities in full swing, a certain candidate for president who would later call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home, famously told a reporter that he wasn’t sure he would fill out the census “long form” if he received one. Then-Texas Governor George W. Bush suggested that the lengthier questionnaire sent to a sample of households might represent unwanted government intrusion into Americans’ personal lives.

Maybe there’s something in the water in Texas. Fast-forward 15 years, and another Lone Star politician believes even more firmly that the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) — the modern version of the long form — is an “invasion of privacy.” The head of the Appropriations panel that funds the bureau, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), thinks we should let Americans opt-out of this civic duty.

But I shouldn’t pick on Texas. Sen. James Lankford made his distaste for the ACS clear at a recent Senate oversight hearing on the 2020 Census. As the Oklahoma Republican described it, survey takers were all but stalking his constituents, door knocking incessantly and parked at the curb for hours, waiting for someone to come home and ask put-upon Sooners what time they leave for work (those would be the journey to work questions, folks). Scary stuff for a mother home alone with her kids, the senator said grimly. (We will pause here to consider whether answering the survey on-line or by mail when it first arrives with the message, Your response is required by law, might alleviate these spooky encounters. And then we will move on.)

Making response to the survey voluntary might not be a strong enough antidote for government nosiness and over-zealous survey takers in Sen. Lankford’s book. In 2012, while still in the House, he co-authored an amendment to nix the ACS altogether. A majority of his colleagues went along for the ride, largely along party lines. The Senate didn’t sign off on this rather drastic reaction to a vital survey that many U.S. households will never see. But the freshman senator now has a plum seat on the very panel that funds the Census Bureau. This story may not have a happy ending.

But maybe I can pick on Texas, because Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) just reintroduced his ACS opt-out bill (H.R. 2255). The congressman explained in an op-ed (The Humble Observer, Houston, May 15, 2015) that people are tired of government snooping into how many toilets and working sinks are in their homes. Perhaps people living in one of the nation’s largest metro areas are unaware that two percent of American homes, and more than three percent of Appalachian region homes, still lack full indoor plumbing. For 50 years, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has used census “long form” and, now, ACS data to identify impoverished areas and upgrade housing quality across a 200,000 square mile area that is 42 percent rural. Making ACS response voluntary could eliminate reliable data for many rural areas. (We will pause once more to gently remind the Houston lawmaker that the ARC’s plumbing improvement and other anti-poverty efforts are ubiquitous in eastern Kentucky, whose representative in Congress, Rep. Harold Rogers, is grand pooh-bah of the all-powerful Appropriations Committee.)

Speaking of Kentucky, Sen. Rand Paul (R), through his libertarian-colored glasses, has carried the “voluntary ACS” legislative banner for several years. He’s been a little busy running for president this year, though, and hasn’t reintroduced a bill to save Americans from the crushing (45 minute) burden of filling out a survey that helps legislators make smart decisions. (No, we will not stop here for a joke about how data for smart decision-making might be a wasted resource when it comes to Congress. Rather, we will contemplate what Sen. Paul might say if he were asked about answering ten census questions during a 2020, instead of 2016, presidential run.)

Perhaps other lawmakers would do well to consider the information vacuum north of the border before jumping into the data-less abyss. Canada, sophisticated in so many ways, decided to scrap its mandatory census long form in favor of a voluntary National Household Survey in 2011, succumbing to conservative hand-wringing over the longer questionnaire’s perceived manifestation of government overreach.

The results of this policy shift were predictable (and predicted; Canada’s chief statistician resigned in protest when Parliament passed the law). Response rates to the voluntary survey plummeted from 94 percent to 69 percent. The cost went up by $22 million in an effort to keep the survey representative by increasing the sample. But non-response remained unacceptably high among harder-to-count population groups, and Statistics Canada could not produce reliable socio-economic data for a quarter of all localities, mostly small communities and rural areas.

Canadian policymakers and businesses that rely on census data to assess the nation’s economic and social needs have had a few years to absorb fully the voluntary survey wreckage, and they don’t like what they see. Or, to be more precise, what they can’t see. The president of the Canadian Association of Business Economics wrote in a Toronto Globe and Mail op-ed (Nov. 5, 2014) that the highest non-response rates are in rural and low-income areas “where the need for robust data is arguably most pressing to support sound decision making.” Policymakers can’t compare conditions between towns, counties, and regions in many cases, while neighborhood comparisons simply are of “questionable feasibility,” Paul Jacobson observed. Toronto’s public health agency, tasked in part with improving health care for the city’s low-income residents, has stopped using the unreliable long form data altogether.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Restaurants Canada, Toronto Region Board of Trade, and other influential business groups are now pressing to restore the mandatory long form. Many of their U.S. counterparts are urging Congress not to make the same mistake Canada did.

Here’s what doesn’t sit right with me about the voluntary-ACS campaign: You can’t make participation in a portion of the decennial census optional, without somehow making democracy optional. We Americans have a lot of rights; whatever happened to our sense of collective responsibility for preserving our democratic ideals? You know, “Ask what you can do for your country.” Helping elected leaders spend public funds wisely through an objective data-lens, available for all to view, doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

So, ask not what your country can do for you… unless, of course, you are still sitting in traffic on US 290 in Houston. Then, by all means, claim your share of federal highway improvement funds — doled out, in part, based on ACS data — before you tell your government, as Rep. Poe patriotically put it, to leave you alone.

Houston, We Have a (Traffic) Problem

Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann LowenthalBy Terri Ann Lowenthal

Houston-area residents have been wasting a lot of time in traffic. Fortunately, Federal Highway Administration funds have helped expand the US 290/Hempstead Corridor, the major artery bringing commuters to and from their jobs in and around the Lone Star State’s largest city.

I know this because Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) highlighted the $267 million in federal grant money for this project on his congressional website. Rep. Culberson is the new chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that decides how much money the U.S. Census Bureau should get every year.

I don’t know a whole lot about the US 290 expansion project, but I instinctively like it. I’m impatient by nature, and there is nothing I dread more than sitting in traffic.

Right now, there are millions of Americans fuming in their cars and on crowded transit platforms and buses, wondering why their duly elected representatives can’t do something to ease the pain of their daily slog to work. Enter Congress, which helpfully authorizes and funds massive transportation programs to widen highways and improve public transit. Lawmakers could dole out highway and transit funds to the community whose commuters tweet the most curses per hour. But that would raise the national social media noise level considerably.

So Congress has taken a more reasoned approach. Localities must demonstrate their need for taxpayer dollars with data showing, for example, population growth (current and projected), commuting patterns, and road usage and capacity. Where do they get this information? A primary source is the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), the modern version of the census long form. The ACS asks a rolling sample of American households about “journey to work” and access to vehicles, among other questions that help policymakers assess community conditions and needs. Hey, I feel for my Houston brethren, but I want some assurances that they really need those road improvements before sending my hard-earned tax dollars their way. We’ve got traffic problems of our own on the East Coast, heaven knows.

Chairman Culberson doesn’t much care for the ACS. The survey is an invasion of privacy, he told the Secretary of Commerce at a hearing last month to review the department’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request. In fact, the congressman doesn’t think the government has a right to ask Americans for any information beyond the number of people in their household. (He did helpfully suggest that the IRS already knows some things about us and that the Census Bureau could use those data instead. The bureau is exploring that possibility.)

The congressman’s distaste for the ACS is unfortunate. Maybe even a bit incongruous? He proudly points out that the U.S. 290 improvements will “attract new businesses to Houston.” The Greater Houston Partnership (the local Chamber of Commerce equivalent) is working hard to make that happen. In testimony opposing legislation to make response to the ACS voluntary in 2012, Vice President of Research Patrick Jankowski described how the GHP used ACS data on demographic diversity, commute times, occupation (engineers, scientists, etc.), and other socio-economic characteristics to help 34 companies relocate, expand, or stay in Houston, with investment commitments of nearly $750 million and creation of thousands of jobs. This is a wonderful thing, people. If I were the GHP, however, I’d be having nightmares about how to make the business case for Houston without comprehensive, neighborhood-level data — available only from the ACS — to show what the metro area has to offer. Equally important, the ACS lets Houston tout its advantages over other cities, because the survey produces comparable data for every community in the country. Without this universal information, Houston leaders might have to resort to a billboard alongside US 290, saying “Pick me, pick me!”

ACS critics suggest that the survey somehow violates an anti-tyrannical principle of our nation’s birth. But the Founding Fathers themselves envisioned the decennial census as a vehicle for gathering data that would inform prudent and fair governance. Then-Representative James Madison successfully argued that the first Census Act should authorize the collection of information beyond a “bare enumeration of inhabitants; it would enable them [legislators] to adapt the public measures to the particular circumstances of the community,” to enable “the legislature… to make a proper provision for the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing interests” of the country.

Look, I value my privacy as much as the next guy. But I’m with Mr. Madison on this one: I value my right to know what’s going on in this complicated world just as much.

# # #

Author’s note: I note with sadness, but also with great admiration and fondness for a wonderful mentor, the passing of Dr. Janet Norwood, Commissioner of Labor Statistics from 1979-91. Her obituary in The Washington Post (March 31, 2015) ended with a quote from Dr. Norwood, “You can’t have a democratic society without having a good data base.” Thank you for the timely reminder, Janet.

Trying to Read the ACS Content Tea Leaves (Good Luck With That)

By Terri Ann LowenthalCensus Project Co-Director Terri Ann Lowenthal

There’s a certain je ne sais quoi to the way Congress deals with the census. One minute, lawmakers are trying to deep-six the Census Bureau’s signature American Community Survey (the modern day census “long form”). The next, they’re ignoring the Census Bureau altogether. Or they’re using it as a piggybank for their favorite programs. Those would be the programs that largely rely on census data to allocate the money legislators from both parties pilfered from the Census Bureau. It’s all very confusing.

But the Census Bureau has tried to rise above the hopelessly mixed signals from Congress (We don’t like what you do. We don’t care what you do. We don’t want to pay for what you do, even though everything else we do depends on it. What exactly is it that you do?), forging ahead with the most rigorous review to date of questions on the ACS.

The Census Bureau is completing the first phase of its multi-year ACS Content Review effort. On October 31, it published a notice in the Federal Register proposing to eliminate several questions that the agency concluded pose a greater burden on the public, relative to the benefits of the data to policymakers and program administrators. The bureau has cool scatter-plots and matrices and charts that show how ACS questions stack up on a cost-benefit analysis, but the bottom line is that Congress itself has asked for most of the data, directly or indirectly, to set policy, allocate resources, and implement programs. A handful of questions tip the scale too far on the cost side and are on the chopping block for the 2016 ACS.

Let’s stipulate that the survey can appear daunting to those who receive it each year. That would be less than 3 percent of American households, although if you believe ACS opponents, you’d think the government had all of us chained to our desks, depriving us of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness until we answer 72 questions about ourselves, our families and our homes. The range of topics can make it seem like the Census Bureau is being a bit nosy. Naysayers like to point to questions about what time people leave for work or whether people have difficulty dressing or bathing. I am confident these critics do not include legislators who issue triumphant press releases about traffic congestion mitigation projects and services for people with disabilities they secure for folks in the home district.

But, where was I? Oh yes, scrubbing ACS content for errant questions. Turns out that questions on your marital history, what you studied in college and whether there’s a business or medical office on your property don’t produce information that legislators and government agencies use widely.

It’s a good thing, by the way, that the Census Bureau still plans to ask whether you are married or not. For the 2000 Census, the bureau decided to move the “marital status” question from the short form, which everyone gets, to the long form sent to a sample of households. Ultra-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) balked at this slap to a sacred family institution, and his colleagues adopted a resolution to keep the query on the 100-percent form. (Unfortunately for them, timing is everything in a census: the questionnaires had already been printed when the resolution passed.) House members had already jumped on the “more data is better” bandwagon, with more timely bills to add questions on family caregivers, home computer use and Internet access, and to preserve the ancestry question. But once the enumeration started, lawmakers raced to distance themselves from the forms flooding mailboxes; there were seven proposed House bills from March to May 2000 to limit the number of census questions Americans must answer (in most cases, just name and number of people in household). I do not think the law requires consistency in census gripes.

For the current round of questionnaire trimming, the Federal Register comment period closes on Dec. 30, 2014. The agency plans further research on alternative sources for data gathered in the ACS (such as administrative records) and the wording of questions, some of which is problematic. (Millennials, for example, can’t relate to “dial-up service” on the Internet access question. Go figure. Boomers probably have nightmares just seeing the term. Screeeeech ….)

I’m betting that demographers, researchers and policymakers interested in STEM education will fight to save some of the questions the Census Bureau wants to drop. The bureau must finalize all ACS content decisions (adding and dropping questions) before the April 1, 2017, legal deadline for submitting census topics to Congress; the actual questions go to the legislature one year later.

Congress will have the final word on content, which might be difficult to parse when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. The House has voted twice to make ACS response voluntary (a stake in the heart of small-area data) and once to eliminate the survey altogether. Yet, lawmakers want the data to divvy up $400+ billion annually for highways and transit, education, emergency preparedness, rural development, food and housing assistance, job training, and much more. Good luck with that when the data disappear.

My Lucky Day (A real ACS household in the family!)

Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann LowenthalBy Terri Ann Lowenthal

I’m so excited; I might jump right out of my skin!

My dad just called from Connecticut. “Terri,” he said breezily. “We just got something in the mail from the Census Bureau. It’s called the… let’s see… the American Community Survey.” My heart soared!

Dad (age 83) seemed to appreciate the importance of the mailing they received. But I launched into my speech anyway. I described how special my parents were — one of only 295,000 households in the whole country to get the world’s premier survey each month. How the data are used by businesses, their local and state governments, federal policymakers. Everyone! Okay, he really didn’t need much convincing, but I had to practice my pitch.

“The ‘postcard’ I have says we can do this online,” dad said. He, who has never used a computer in his life (doesn’t even have a cell phone), started reading off the URL. I confirmed that would probably be the easiest way to respond; mom (age 81) is quite computer-literate. Sensing my glee at encountering a real, live ACS household, dad suggested they could wait until I came home for Passover in two weeks, so I could enjoy the experience with them. “NOOO!!! You really should do it now,” I counseled, explaining how the Census Bureau would have to send another letter, perhaps with a paper form, or even telephone for their responses, if they waited too long.

“Okay, well, your mother is busy tomorrow, but we’ll set aside some time the next day to do this.” Such a civic-minded person, my father.

There was one more question: “So, if we do this on the computer, how do they know that it’s us entering the information?” Good question, dad-with-the-engineer’s-mind. I ticked off facts about unique identifiers, barcodes and geo-coding each address to an exact location, which in the low-tech speak for which I am well known probably amounted to, “Trust me, they know what they’re doing.”

I can’t wait to hear about their survey-responding experience when I see them in a couple of weeks. But if they start complaining about nosy or ridiculous questions, I’m sending them straight to the Census Bureau’s new (relatively) Respondent Advocate. (I’m looking at you, Tim Olson.)

As I hung up the phone, I thought back to when my then 11-year-old daughter was crushed when we didn’t get the 2000 Census long form. Probably the only person in the entire U.S. of A. to feel let down by this omission. (“No, we can’t trade with a neighbor who might have received one.”)

People get excited for different reasons. Hey, whatever floats your boat!

From the Ashes… The Poe Bill Rises Again

House Committee to Vote on Voluntary American Community Survey Bill Next Week

Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann LowenthalBy Terri Ann Lowenthal

This week, the College Board announced that it would overhaul the dreaded SAT test, to reflect more realistically the knowledge that students acquire in high school and the skills they will need to succeed in college. In that spirit, let me pose a strategic-thinking question:

Let’s say you’re a member of Congress. A committee on which you serve holds a hearing on a bill making response to a unique, irreplaceable and vital government survey voluntary, because the sponsor believes the government has no business collecting data on the characteristics of the nation’s population or households. Every witness at this hearing, other than the bill’s sponsor himself, opposes the bill. Those speaking against the proposal include a conservative think tank, a major housing industry association, and a leading business sector organization from the sponsor’s own home town; other diverse stakeholders submit their objections in writing.

The top agency official responsible for the survey tells your panel that making response optional would have serious, adverse consequences for a data source used by state and local governments, business and industry, transportation planners, school boards, advocates for veterans and people with disabilities, higher education systems, emergency preparedness agencies, community nonprofits — yes, the list goes on and on. He points to a congressionally-mandated field test showing that survey response rates, especially by mail, would plummet, and costs would rise by nearly a third (+$66 million dollars) at a time when Congress is squeezing the agency’s budget. The agency would no longer be able to produce essential demographic, social and economic estimates for less-populous areas of the country, including 41 percent of U.S. counties, small cities, villages, towns, many school districts, neighborhoods and American Indian reservations. “Modern societies rely on accurate statistics, and the ACS is a cornerstone of our country’s statistical infrastructure,” the agency director concludes.

Taking all of this information into account, your next logical step as an elected representative is to:

A: Conclude that the bill is misguided and would not serve the interests of the nation, or even the branch of government of which you are a member.

B: Ask the agency that administers the survey to ensure that it only collects data required to implement federal laws, establish eligibility for formula grants, and allocate federal program funds — all of which Congress directed.

C: Hold a future oversight hearing to explore ways the agency can improve the questionnaire, minimize burden on the public by re-engineering field procedures, and address concerns about privacy in an information-dependent era.

D: All of the above.

E: Two years later, schedule a vote on the bill anyway because, hey, who cares if no one thinks the bill has any merit; we’re Congress, and no one thinks anything we do makes sense! Plus, mid-term elections are around the corner.

If you selected answers “A,” “B,” “C,” or “D,” do not fret. The College Board announced that, as part of its overhaul, it will not penalize wrong answers! But if you still think you deserve credit, you might write to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which will vote next week (Wednesday, March 12) on H.R. 1078, a bill sponsored by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) to make response to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (part of the decennial census) optional.

And if you’re still looking for irony, consider this: Then-Census Director Robert Groves, testifying before the committee on March 6, 2012, noted that The College Board uses ACS data in their efforts to increase the number of students who graduate from college, especially those from high-poverty communities.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lie down with a cold pack on my forehead (again).

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Editor’s Note: For more information, please read:

 

A Salute to Our Veterans (Courtesy of the ACS)

by Terri Ann LowenthalTerri Ann Lowenthal

Let me start with a timely salute to our nation’s veterans. All 21 million of them, including 2.4 million African American and 1.2 million Hispanic former service members. Shout-outs to Killeen, Texas, and Clarksville, Tennessee, where veterans comprise a quarter or more of local residents. Hats off to the more than nine in ten veterans with a high school diploma — a greater proportion than the general population. And is it any wonder that these patriotic fellow citizens are twice as likely as non-veterans to hold a job in public administration?

Oh, sorry, I digress from the focus of this blog. But really, people, it’s important that we know this stuff — and more — about those who defend our freedoms. About three-quarters of our living military veterans served worldwide while the country was at war. More than a quarter of both Gulf War and post-9/11 era vets live with a service-connected disability. Nearly 30 percent of veterans reside in rural areas, but rural vets represent 41 percent of those enrolled in the VA health care system. Veterans in rural communities are more likely to have at least one disability compared to non-veteran rural dwellers.

Raise your hand if you know where I’m going with this. That’s right: a lot of what we know about our veterans comes from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). Businesses, nonprofits, and federal, state and local leaders use ACS data to understand and address the needs of veterans — from job training and employment assistance, to health care, to housing, and more. Who among us wouldn’t want that for our former soldiers?

So why, oh why, in the words of Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), sponsor of a bill to cancel the ACS (and just about every other Census Bureau program), are Americans “fed up with these mandatory census surveys and [they’re] asking us to stop the harassment”?

Ummm, no, they’re not. Okay, maybe a few are grumbling. According to the Census Bureau’s new cheerleader for harassed Americans (officially called the Respondent Advocate), roughly 60 percent of households answer the ACS without any prodding at all. With a little encouragement and explanation, by phone or in person, the response rate jumps to 97+ percent (weighted). Of the 3.54 million households in the 2012 ACS sample, less than 8,000 refused to participate (and no one, I can assure you, was hauled off to jail). Let’s see: that’s a refusal rate of (drumroll) two-tenths of a percent. The 535 members of Congress were so deluged with anti-ACS complaints that they sent the bureau (another drumroll, please) 187 letters on behalf of distraught constituents over the past 18 months.

Sure, the ACS questions could use a systematic review and some fine-tuning; thorough training will help ensure positive interaction between survey takers and responding householders. I suspect the Census Bureau has been a little behind the eight ball in acknowledging thoughtful concerns about parts of the survey; it’s finally on the right track, I think. More on these efforts in my next blog.

But let’s stop pretending: ACS critics aren’t falling on their data swords for countless (no pun intended, census fans!) Americans abiding stoically in the shadow of government overreach. Ideology — namely, a belief that government can require little of the governed, coupled with an aversion to the sort of federal assistance dispensed on the basis of ACS data — is driving the campaign to weaken (with voluntary response) or eliminate the survey.

And that’s okay. (Yes, you read that correctly.) If you don’t believe that government has a fundamental interest in producing objective, comprehensive data to inform and guide decision-making, go ahead and make your case. Explain and defend the consequences or propose a practical alternative. Just please drop the cover of phantom citizens cowering behind mailboxes, dreading a nosy questionnaire and the prospect of devoting an hour of time to help the world’s greatest democracy function smartly. Most Americans, it seems, are wiser than you think. And they all love our veterans.