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Steven Ruggles Profile picture
@HistDem
Jul 3, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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Here is a screenshot from yesterday's Census Bureau Webinar on new specifications for the 2020 census. The table shows the crazy inconsistencies in the block-level data, comparing the version they adopted April 28 with the new version just announced./1
The demonstration data released in April was terrible, as we and others explained.
We were expecting the new version to be more accurate than the previous one, but for blocks it turned out even worse./2
users.pop.umn.edu/~ruggles/Artic…
The Census Bureau is deliberately introducing the errors because they claim it is necessary to protect privacy. I dispute that claim in this working paper. /3
assets.ipums.org/_files/mpc/wp2…
Under the new specifications, the number of blocks with no people but with occupied housing units almost doubled, to 149,000. There are zero blocks like that in the real data./2
The number of blocks with no people but with occupied housing units almost doubled, to 149,000. There are zero blocks like that in the real data./3
As I mentioned yesterday, the Lord-of-the-Flies blocks with all children and no adults went from 91,000 to 164,000 in the new "production" version of the data. No such blocks exist in the real data./4
This graph from the Webinar shows the mean error in the population census blocks under the old system and the new one. /5
The previous version got the population of Liberty Island wrong by a factor of 24. In the new data, it is likely that the population of small blocks is off by at least an order of magnitude. Data of that quality is not worth producing./end

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More from @HistDem

Steven Ruggles Profile picture
Apr 30, 2022
The Census Bureau has been struggling ever since it started outsourcing operations to defense contractors in the 1990s, as @dldmag and I argued in our 2020 article on institutional change in the Bureau. The 2000 and 2010 censuses were near disasters. 1/4 academic.oup.com/jah/article/10… Image
The 2020 census faced special challenges stemming from both the pandemic and from Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question at the last minute. But as @dldmag and I argued, “The greatest concern for the 2020 census is the potential for information technology failure.” 2/4
We were prescient. The Bureau can’t figure out the software needed to combine the housing and population data while simultaneously supporting their new disclosure control policies. This will delay by at least two years release of detailed statistics. 3/4
nytimes.com/2022/04/29/us/…
Read 4 tweets
Steven Ruggles Profile picture
Aug 24, 2021
In our new open-access research brief, @dcvanriper and I argue that the emperor is buck naked. 1/x
rdcu.be/cvT26
The Census Bureau plans a new approach to disclosure control for the 2020 census that will add noise to every statistic the agency produces for places below the state level. /2
The new approach, known as differential privacy, “marks a sea change for the way that official statistics are produced and published.” /3
Read 35 tweets
Steven Ruggles Profile picture
Aug 18, 2021
The town of Carrollton, Mississippi won the Differential Privacy lottery! They really have somewhere in the neighborhood of 175 people, but the 2020 Census "counted" over twice as many, 423! /1 thetaxpayerschannel.org/news.php?news_…
The discrepancy is mostly due to one block, where there are no households but 214 persons. The only building on the block is the courthouse, and nobody lives there. /2
The cause of the error could be the new disclosure control system called Differential Privacy, or perhaps to a mysterious new system of Group Quarters Count Imputation. /3
Read 7 tweets
Steven Ruggles Profile picture
Aug 18, 2021
The town of Carrollton, Mississippi won the Differential Privacy lottery! They really have somewhere in the neighborhood of 175 people, but the 2020 Census "counted" over twice as many, 423! /1
thetaxpayerschannel.org/news.php?news_…
The discrepancy is mostly due to one block, where there are no households but 214 persons. The only building on the block is the courthouse, and nobody lives there. /2
Of course, for every town that wins the lottery and doubles its population due to differential privacy, there will be a loser that is missing half its population in the official count. /3
Read 5 tweets
Steven Ruggles Profile picture
Aug 16, 2021
The Census Bureau adopted a global privacy budget of ε=19.61 for the PL-94-171 redistricting data file. What does that imply?
According to differential privacy co-inventor @frankmcsherry it means that the Census Bureau privacy protections are pointless.
In a 2017 article in Wired Magazine, @frankmcsherry criticized Apple for using an epsilon of 14. "Apple has put some kind of handcuffs on in how they interact with your data," he says. "It just turns out those handcuffs are made out of tissue paper."
wired.com/story/apple-di…
Read 6 tweets
Steven Ruggles Profile picture
Jul 30, 2021
Newly-available data show that the 2020 Census will be the worst ever with respect to one key metric: Item Non Response (INR), which occurs when people are counted but the census does not capture their characteristics. This graph compares INR in 2010 and 2020 for sex and age. /1
These graphs were obtained through a recent FOIA request and appeared in a court filing last week (1:21-cv-01361-ABJ). DRF1 (Decennial Response File 1) is the raw data, and DRF2 has the duplicates removed. Here are the INR graphs for Hispanic Origin and Race. /2
In most cases non-response is running between 10% and 20% in 2020. In past censuses going back at least 170 years, non-response on these questions averages from 1% to 3%. Here is the graph for family relationship and housing tenure (home owned or rented). /3
Read 6 tweets

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