The Census :  Foundation of our Democracy

Jane S. DeLung has an article in the Population Press on the 2010 Census.  " The Census is one of the most powerful tools in our democracy, although it is a step-child in the world of Washington for most of the decade.  Only at the end of the decade when politicians realize that their congressional seat may be at stake do they become involved and concerned about the census.  Only when the numbers are published do people begin to realize the consequences of the data."  The article provides a history of the Census, reviews the issues of the 2010 Census and the role of the Census in redistricting.  The Census: Foundation of Democracy can be accessed through this link.  

EXPLAINING THE NEED FOR ADJUSTMENT IN THE CENSUS

From Terri Ann Lowenthal: The Census Project

 This article does an excellent job of explaining the need for statistical adjustment. 

Patrick O'Mahen: Counted out by the census
02/15/2010
Michigan Daily, The - Ann Arbor, MI

We're lucky to have Michigan man and highly decorated social scientist Robert Groves running the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet, when Groves worked at the Census Bureau on the 1990 count and suggested adjusting the census's official numbers based on sampling that showed severe undercounts for children and minority groups, he was shut down by the first Bush administration's Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher. 

And in a 2009 article in Time magazine, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R–Calif.) suggested that President Barack Obama's selection of Groves was “troubling” and would open the door to advance “an ulterior political agenda.” From the perspective of scientific accuracy and political justice, that 1990 decision and Issa's complaints are misguided. Social scientists like Groves have developed statistical tools that allow us to make more accurate inferences about populations than do direct attempts at counting. As currently designed, the census undercounts minority communities, unjustly costing them federal aid. 

The problem is that the direct count undertaken by the census is not some ideal. Instead, the direct count is a survey that still has all the problems that any other survey does, as Professor of Political Science and Research Associate Professor for the Center for Political Studies Vincent Hutchings pointed out in the Daily's Apr. 2, 2009 article detailing Groves' nomination. 

Although it tries to count everyone personally — unlike a national sample used in, for example, the Gallup poll measuring Obama's approval rating — the census still falls prey to all the potential pitfalls of any survey research. 

Here's how: The first and most important key for any survey's accuracy is that each member of the population you are trying to survey must have an equal chance of being selected for the survey. Because it is trying to count everyone directly, in principle the U.S. Census questionnaire satisfies this requirement — every resident has a 100-percent chance of being selected. But in reality, the count fails to include every resident. This failure would not be a massive problem if members of every demographic group were equally likely to respond to the survey, but the truth is some groups are less likely to be counted than others. That creates non-random error, which leads to biased results. 

College students, for example, are often confused by census instructions and do not respond to the survey, thinking that they will be counted with their parents in their hometowns. The Daily reported on Jan. 31 that Ann Arbor's overall response rate to the 2000 census survey was 76 percent, but one primarily student-intensive neighborhood had a response rate of 38 percent. 

Of course, investigators then follow up the survey in an attempt to count everyone, scouring the country — with special focus on neighborhoods with low response rates. But despite their best efforts, they miss people and they miss them in a non-random fashion. Again, taking the college student example, the Daily reported that follow-up investigations to low-response areas by census takers that start in late April tend to miss college students, many of whom go home for summer vacation starting in May. 

Though missing college students is bad, the problem is much broader. After the census is completed, follow-up researchers randomly select samples of residents and ask them if they weren't counted, were counted once or counted multiple times. The results of those follow-up surveys show that some groups tend to be undercounted much more severely than others. For example after the 1990 count, the Census Bureau estimated that African Americans were undercounted by a rate of 4.4 percent and Hispanics by roughly 5 percent. In contrast, whites were undercounted by only 0.9 percent. Children under 18 were undercounted by 3.2 percent – double the overall rate. Minority children were undercounted, most significantly among African Americans, by rates up to 7.1 percent. 

These discrepancies have serious political and economic consequences. Since the census affects apportionment and redistricting of congressional seats, states with large numbers of minorities might miss out on representatives. More important is the lack of federal money flowing to communities that need it. Communities of minority children tend to be clustered together in major cities, which then don't get their fair share of government funding for education and other social programs. 

Of course, when social scientists like Groves have pointed this out in the past, they have been accused of being biased and political opportunists for Democrats, who tend to be supported by undercounted minority groups. In this case, though, the truth is that the only bias is in the original direct count — and against the correctly funded demographic groups which are undercounted through no fault of their own.

CONGRESS REFLECTS THE NATION????

Members of Congress are very different from the nation they represent according to a report released by the Congressional Research Service this week.  While Congress has become more diverse over the last fifteen years, it continues to be a predominately white, male, native born and better educated than the American population.  Some of the differences are completely reasonable and others reflect decades of discrimination and gerrymandering. 

The average age of all Members was 58 years.  The average age of a Member of the House of Representatives was 57years and a Senator 63.  The average age of the residents of the United States is 34. A better comparison would be to residents who are over 25 which is the age someone must be to be elected to Congress.  The average age of Americans over 25 is 50.   A person must be 30 to be elected to the Senate.  The youngest member of Congress is 28 while the oldest is 92.

The record number of women in the US Congress (93) represent 17 percent of the total Membership.  Women represent 50.7% of the US population but they are 52 percent of the population over 25.   There is a long way to go before women are 50% of the Members of Congress. 

Asians, Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders represent 2 percent of the Members of Congress while blacks represent 7.8 percent and Hispanics 5.4 percent.  These ethnic groups represent 4.65, 12.8 and 15.7 percent of the US population respectively.  However, when one considers the eligible population over 25 the slight differences in percentages in no way reflects the inbalance in representation in Congress. Asians are 4% of the population, blacks  are 11.6 and Hispanics are 12.8 .

Less than 2% of the Members of the US Congress were born overseas.  More than 12% of the nation is foreign born. While 30% of the US population has a college degree, 95% of the members of Congress have a college degree.  A little less than 5% of Members have a doctoral degree and 40% have law degrees.  Only 3% of the US population has either a PhD, MD, or JD ( Law degree).

Members of Congress are older, better educated wealthier, and more likely to be native born, male and white than either the general population or Americans over 25 which would be the representative group. There are challenges in having a Congress that reflects the diversity of America and can understand the issues facing all Americans.   

A New Option for Redistricting

Usually prisons have been placed in rural areas of states, far from the cities  where most of the people residing in prisons originate. This has resulted in predominately rural areas having extra clout in state and local legislative bodies and greater representation in Congress than the number of residents would justify.

After significant lobbying by advocacy groups, the Census Bureau has agreed to release, by May 2011, block-level information on the location of group quarters facilities, such as prisons, nursing homes and mental hospitals which would allow state and local legislatures to choose to redraw both Congressional and state legislative district lines without including inmates. States would not have to exclude prisoners from the count if they did not want to.

The Supreme Court has consistently supported the Census Bureau’s policy of counting people where they reside for the greatest part of the year for apportionment purposes.  Under residence rules that govern where people are counted in the decennial census, prisoners are counted at their place of incarceration on Census Day, not at their home address.  University students are counted at the town in which they are attending college rather than at their home.

 This residency rule has increased the political power of both those communities such as Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill or Princeton which have universities and community such as Attica in New York, Joliet in Illinois or  Nobel County in Ohio  that have prisons.  The critical difference, however, is that the students have the option of registering to vote and participate in the political process in the community where the university is located.

In New York, removing the prison population from the redistricting process could produce a sea change in the political structure in Albany given that the Democrats control the State Senate by 1 vote. Also, New York may lose one Congressional seat and the removal of prisons population from the redistricting process will hurt up-state New York.

Several advocacy organizations have been pressing for a change in the prisoner rule, arguing that the frequent placement of prisons in rural counties with otherwise small populations artificially inflates political representation for these areas.  Several states legislatures, including New York's, are considering proposals to remove prisoners from the population base used for state redistricting. Other states considering a change include Florida, Illinois, Maryland, and Wisconsin. A growing number of advocacy organizations, including the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Demos, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and Unity Diaspora Coalition have been active in pushing for this change. 

Census Director Robert Groves reached an agreement with census oversight subcommittee Chairman Clay to release detailed information on the location of group quarters, including prisoners, much earlier than in previous censuses, to allow interested legislatures to consider the data in the redistricting process. This does not mean that legislatures must exclude prisoners from their redistricting efforts but that they may. These data will not affect reapportionment because the total state population including prisoners will be used for the purpose of Congressional reapportionment.

 The PPI and other prisoners' rights advocates also have urged the Census Bureau to collect a home address from inmates, who are counted during the Group Quarters Enumeration operation in April. However, the Census Bureau maintains that the cost and time involved in collecting home addresses ( or last known address) of prisoners would be too great and they were not prepared to do so for the 2010 Census (  The report is available on the Census Bureau's web site.)

For more on the issue of “prison gerrymandering” go to the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) web site.  The PPI has been documenting the effects of the census residence rule governing prisoners on the redistricting process; the organization produces the Prisoners of the Census newsletter.

Demography* is hot!

"Yes, you will live to be 80!" flashed the headline on MSN's home page recently.  The article by Liz Pulliam Weston that followed made pointed use of statistics on life expectancy.   

Take note: 75% of men and 87% of women -- live to age 65.  And, the longer you live,  the more likely you will continue to do so.  At birth a man's life expectancy is almost 75 years, but if he makes it to 70, statistics give him 13 more years to live.  Women do even better.  At birth their life expectancy is almost 80 years, but if they reach 70, they are likely to live about 16 years longer!  

Why are such statistics suddenly compelling?  Because the golden years of retirement may now stretch two decades or more!   In a nation with an aging population, one that hasn't been in the habit of saving and is still in the midst of a serious recession, this is a new and daunting prospect!    As Weston writes unless you want to shiver "through your last years in a threadbare cardigan, you'll have to figure out a way to set aside some money" beyond the average $1000 benefit check current retirees receive. 

Are there some other demographic facts we should pay attention to? 

Think about these. Educational attainment in this country continues to rise, but the gap between the earning power of a high school diploma and a baccalaureate degree remains dramatic.  Although 87% of our population over 25 had graduated from high school in 2008, up from 83% a decade earlier, their annual earnings averaged only about $31,000, while the roughly 30% who persisted through a bachelor’s degree made on average close to $57,000.  Can demographics help us figure out who isn’t likely to have a shot at earning that extra $26,000? 

Recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that more than half (53%) the Asians in the U.S., but only a third (33%) of non-Hispanic whites, 20% of blacks, and 13% of Hispanics have baccalaureate degrees (U.S. Census Bureau News, 4/27/09).  In other words, significantly more than half of our white (66%), black (80%) and Hispanic (87%) populations are likely to find their earning power limited by the absence of a college degree.   Compelling?  You bet - for both the individuals and families affected by low wages as well as a nation struggling to maintain its economic position in the face of newly emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil.  Maybe we can convince MSN to give this home page billing.

**************************************      

.

Challenges Ahead for the 2010 Census

January 29, 2010

Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, spoke at a forum on the 2010 Census on Jan. 21 about challenges the Census Bureau faces in attempting to count everybody. He also talked about the potential problem of differing data from the 2010 Census and American Community Survey. The event was held at the center; it also was sponsored by the American Statistical Association and the DC chapter of the American Association of Public Opinion Research.

In this edited transcript, ellipses are not used in order to facilitate reading.  These are his comments on the Amercian Community Survey which provides the nation with its critical social-economic data.

American Community Survey and the 2010 Census

The American Community Survey is really a rather remarkable operation.  I was skeptical in the ’90s that this would be pulled off, but it seems to be working.  We get detailed, census-like data. (And by the way, I say “census-like” data:  It’s not quite the same, but the majority of data users think it is the same as the census, and for the non-sophisticated users, the distinction is completely missed.)  We get annual data; we’re getting data based on averages across 12 months of surveys, 36 months and 60 months.  We get annual data for the total population of areas and for the characteristics.

The distinction here is those population totals don’t come from the ACS survey itself. The totals come from the population estimates program of the Census Bureau, and are not census-like.  The ACS totals by race come from the population estimates program.

This distinction is an important one and it’s overlooked by most of the people who use it.  We’re seeing a broad user community develop:  That’s an invaluable tool for census planning. There are a lot of sophisticated users. There are a lot of unsophisticated users. And there are a lot of people who should be using it, who aren’t.  But the confusion between “census” and “survey” is ongoing and is difficult.

The challenge and the potential train wreck, I’m afraid, is that the data users have been getting data from the ACS for their areas, for their communities, for several years.  There are going to be a series of numbers out there that people will have used.  And the census is going to come in and the numbers are going to be different from those in the ACS.  It’s going to be a lot different in some places because of coverage error; it’s going to be a lot different in some places because of estimation error.  But it’s going to be different.

The problem, I think, is the credibility of both data systems is going to be at issue.  There are going to be large differences in places.  The political users of this will want whichever is larger, and they’ll challenge whichever one is smaller.  We–the data user community and the Census Bureau, as the producer of this–are going to need a strong defense of both data systems. It’s going to require help from key users like us to emphasize that these are both valuable systems.  We have to explain why do both.  I think we need to preempt that criticism as soon as we can and talk about the value of both of these data systems.

The census, in addition to the political uses for reapportionment and redistricting, offers us an opportunity to re-benchmark the population estimates and the ACS. It’s critical that we are able to do that periodically.  But the ACS data provides a broad range of information and it gives us up-to-date annual data that is a tremendous resource, and much better than anything we had.

The feedback of ACS in the census process was alluded to earlier.  I think it’s been a major breakthrough in planning for the census, and the value of it I don’t think can be understated.  The feedback that we haven’t seen yet, to my satisfaction at least, is the feedback from the ACS into the population estimates program, that can improve and make the ACS more census-like, if you will.

Getting the Message Out

I think what we need over the next year or so is to be very clear in presenting ACS data that it’s not the census, that these are based on [population] estimates, and that the census is coming and it’s going to help us improve these.  The Census Bureau will be releasing 2009 ACS data in September, and I’m sure that people will think those are the census figures.  It’s going to be very important that they be divorced from the census product, that they present it as something different.

The first tract-level information from the ACS is about to be presented in September, and those data are going to be based on 10-year-old [population] estimates, or estimates carried forward by 10 years.  They’re going to be quite different from what we’ll see in the census.  I think it needs to be labeled in a way that’s very, very clear that this is not the census and be very careful.  I think it’s very important, and I think the plans are in place that the 2010 ACS data, which will be released in late 2011, will be weighted to the census counts.  I think those are the plans – I’m not sure.

But it’s important, especially for small areas, that we don’t get two sets of numbers for 2010; that can be confusing.  My own preference would be to even delay those [2010 ACS numbers] a little bit, rather than release data with 2000-based weights, when we have the 2010 data.

Finally, I think, as an analyst who tries to look at this data over time, it’s been very difficult to monitor changes from year to year, because the weighting has been adjusted three times in the last three years.  I think to make this data most useful for analytic purposes, it would be extremely important to go back, look at the last five years of ACS data and produce a set of consistent numbers that are weighted both to the 2000 Census and 2010 Census so that we have a clean product going forward.

I think there’s a challenge for the Census Bureau, certainly, but I think for us, as sophisticated data users, there’s a challenge that these data will present, to be clear to our consumers and the population at large.

 Financial Times reports that family planning may be coming back in style.

For more than 15 years family planning has not been on the international aid agenda.  Reproductive health, women's education, reduction of infant mortality were all seen has having priority over providing women with birth control to enable them to have the number of children they wanted.  Growing concern over aging in the developed world ( due mainly to low fertility) and the increasing  contentious battle over abortion in the United States all conspired to remove birth control from the agenda.  A recent article in the Financial Times suggest that concern over the environment and the failure of Africa to complete the demographic transition may bring family planning back into the international development discussion. 

Financial Times FT.com

In the family way

By Andrew Jack

Published: December 10 2009 02:00 | Last updated: December 10 2009 02:00

Five years ago, Boniface K'Oyugi began to receive troubling news. After 30 years during which family planning programmes had halved the number of births per woman in Kenya to fewer than five, the trend went into reverse.

"When you have a high birthrate people have difficulties with clothing, educating and feeding their children," says Mr K'Oyugi, who heads his country's National Co-ordinating Agency for Population and Development. "We are unable to create sufficient jobs when they enter the workforce - and unemployed people living on marginal land can create conflict."

His concerns reflect a growing worry that some developing countries have failed to follow the broader "demographic transition" to lower fertility levels that has occurred in past decades in the western world and more recently across Latin America and much of Asia. Experts and policymakers are calling increasingly for a renewed and more nuanced approach to family planning, focused on countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as others such as Yemen and Pakistan that trail the trend.

The issue is coming back on to the international agenda after a long absence. Many policymakers argue that without fresh efforts, economic growth will be severely impeded, sparking political instability and environmental degradation.

Rwanda, where pressure on land helped trigger genocide in the past, is among countries taking the lead. With Africa's population symbolically now reaching 1bn people, and the current debate on climate change provoking new concern about the effect of further births, there is a broader effort to shake off the complacency of recent years.

"If you look at countries like Mali, where the population is doubling, agricultural production has not kept up and land is being lost to desertification, you are really in for a Malthusian disaster," says John Cleland from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The solutions, he argues, are cheap and well understood: the provision of contraceptives to the 200m women who are estimated to want them but are unable to gain access. They need enhanced family planning services, subsidies and promotional programmes, with support from doctors, teachers and political leaders. "All the lessons were learnt 20 years ago," says Prof Cleland.

To some, such arguments underplay human ingenuity in overcoming difficulties and confuse cause and effect. In most of the world, birth rates have fallen consistently as countries develop economically, slowing global population growth towards a projected equilibrium currently forecast at 9bn people in 2050 compared with 6.8bn today.

Bill Gates, whose philanthropic foundation is a large funder of the fight against childhood disease, says: "Fairly quickly, parents will have less kids knowing that their chance of having a couple survive to take care of them will be much higher if the health situation improves."

Even in countries with a currently high proportion of young people such as China and India - let alone more developed ones including Italy, Russia and Japan that are already feeling the impact of a predominantly older population - discussion is turning to the burdens of supporting the elderly.

A long-standing view holds that poverty reduction comes before family planning; that the birth rate falls only once the costs of having more children exceed the benefits. Conception remains high as long as parents have children who die in large numbers, want extra hands to work their land or see few sources of support in retirement other than their own offspring.

Y et this pattern - with family size falling simply as the consequence of development - is not universal. Active family planning in Nepal and Bangladesh in the late 20th century significantly reduced fertility rates in countries that were still poor, for example.

"It is not so much a question of which comes first as of getting a virtuous circle of reinforcing changes going," says Stan Bernstein at the United Nations Population Fund, pointing to all the women who want but do not have contraception. "The challenge is not to make something happen that isn't in progress but to see that the benefits and opportunities are available to all."

Historically, childhood deaths and adult infections have fallen largely as a result of improved nutrition and sanitation spurred by economic growth. But in recent years, medical advances and increased funding rapidly extended vaccinations and treatments for many infectious diseases across the developing world.

John May, a specialist in African demography at the World Bank, says: "Economic and social development is of course the best contraceptive, but contraceptives are also good for development." When fertility is high and population growth rapid, he adds, instead of a virtuous circle there emerges a vicious one.

A recent study by his agency argued that demographic factors predicted two-thirds of the shortfall in subSaharan Africa's economic growth compared with other developing regions. The burden of parents looking after their children and the instability of rapidly rising youth unemployment were the main constraints.

Such views helped trigger funding for family planning programmes in the second half of the last century, providing contraceptives, counselling and abortions to supplement traditional methods led by abstinence and prolonged breast-feeding to stagger births further apart.

They were supported by non-profit groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and large donors led by the US, notably beginning with President Richard Nixon. They culminated in the UN international conference on population and development in Cairo in 1994, which called for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health provision.

But funding and political commitment never matched the rhetoric. There was a shift to broader and less well focused "reproductive rights", at a time of suspicion of birth control as coercive or smacking of neo-colonialism. China's one-child family policy had required strong social pressure; forced sterilisation had taken place during Indira Gandhi's state of emergency in India.

Equally, fertility rates were already on the wane in much of the world. "Family planning was killed by its own success," says Mr Bernstein. "A growing number of countries reached a plateau, and people took the attitude that the problem was solved. They forgot that new generations needed to be re-educated."

Third, donors became inspired by new fashions, notably a focus on tackling diseases. None became a greater drain than HIV/Aids, especially in Africa, which bore the greatest brunt of the virus as millions died and many tens of thousands of children were orphaned. "Vertical" programmes improved treatment for individual diseases but undermined other parts of poorly funded healthcare systems, drawing doctors and nurses away from jobs including family planning.

Finally, there was a hardening attitude from religious groups including the Catholic Church and evangelical Protestants, who remain highly influential in Africa, as well as "family" groups influencing US policy. Ronald Reagan's so-called "global gag rule" in 1984 banned federal funding to non-governmental organisations that performed or promoted abortion. It was reinstituted by George W. Bush after his inauguration in 2001. "It put poison in the atmosphere and had a widespread chilling effect," says Adrienne Germain, head of the International Women's Health Coalition, who says support faded for emergency contraception, intra-uterine devices and other approaches. "When the US sneezes, everyone gets sick. The years of the Bush administration had a profound effect."

Defenders of Mr Bush argue that he helped save millions of lives in Africa through a substantial expansion in programmes to treat those with HIV. But these also focused on treatment and on prevention programmes that encouraged abstinence and fidelity at the expense of condom distribution.

The result was that funding, estimated at about $340m (€231m, £210m) a year today, stagnated. The UN abandoned plans for a 10-year anniversary of the Cairo conference in 2004, for fear that the US would upset a fragile international consensus. Even events to take stock this year have been hastily arranged, reflecting a reluctance to plan ahead of the 2008 US presidential elections.

But in recent months, the mood has begun to change again. One of Barack Obama's first decisions as president this year was to scrap the global gag rule. He has since announced an overhaul of global health funding, with fresh emphasis on broader programmes including family planning rather than focusing on a handful of high-priority diseases.

His actions have been mirrored by other large donors. "Integration" is the new buzzword. "Family planning is a necessary part of health services," says Ms Germain. "It has to be offered in maternity clinics and alongside treatment for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases."

The UK's Department for International Development and Australia's Ausaid have placed fresh emphasis on such approaches. The World Bank, criticised in an internal review for letting family planning fall to just 2 per cent of its health, nutrition and population programme budgets in the decade to 2006, is preparing a new strategy for Africa. Along with the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, it is providing funding to support health systems. Mr Gates' foundation provided significant support to a family planning conference in Kampala last month that attracted 1,500 participants.

The Copenhagen summit now under way has added a fresh impetus to debates about the need to stabilise the world's population - although many family planning advocates are wary of over-emphasising the link, given that people in rich countries generate much larger carbon footprints.

That still leaves considerable debate over why African countries have struggled so much to make the demographic transition to lower fertility and consequent economic development. The answers will help determine whether even with enhanced family planning, fertility will fall sustainably. Prof Cleland suggests that not only do African cultural values place emphasis on larger families but communal childcare within clans puts less responsibility on individual parents to limit the number of children.

Greater emphasis on family planning may not be a sufficient condition to accelerate a region's demographic and economic transition - but it seems at least to be a necessary one.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.