Thread by @HistDem

It has now become clear that the 2020 Census will not provide block-level statistics usable for planning or research./1

Newly-published data reveal that the Census Bureau has increased the "noise" added to the data at the block level, compared with the demonstration data released in April./2
census.gov/programs-surve…

That data was already highly problematic, but the new data the Census Bureau plans to release is even worse. For example, in 303,000 blocks there are fewer people than occupied housing units./3

There are 504,000 blocks where people live bit there are no occupied housing units! /4

Conversely, there are 149,000 blocks where there are occupied households but there is zero population living on the block./5

My favorite is the Lord of the Flies blocks, populated by children with zero adults present. The current files has 164,000 of those, compared with just 91,000 in the April version of the data./6

As I noted last April, Liberty Island in New York Harbor is a census block with just two people, but the April demonstration file reported it as having 48 or 72 persons, depending on the version./7

The released block data for 2020 is certain to be even worse. It would be better to simply get rid of block data altogether than to put out junk that will be misinterpreted./8

This loss is a sad, unforced error based on a gross exaggeration of the risk posed by tabular data./end
assets.ipums.org/_files/mpc/wp2…

The actual data, of course, has zero Lord of the Flies blocks.