Archive for the ‘Census Advocacy’ Category

Making Murder Count (New Orleans)

Saturday, July 16th, 2011
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By MARK J. VANLANDINGHAM
Published: July 15, 2011

A CITY’S population size is more than just a number: it determines how many representatives it can send to the state legislature and Congress, and it often determines how much money it receives from state and federal programs. Bigger cities, and faster-growing cities, tend to attract more business investment, professional sports teams and public attention.

Not surprisingly, cities pay a lot of attention to the Census Bureau’s annual population estimates, which take place between the decennial censuses. And when these come in lower than expected, many will fight hard to revise them upward — 39 cities and towns successfully challenged their 2008 estimates alone.

But, because the process is so politicized, it often results in significant overestimates. While local governments and civic boosters might cheer such an outcome, population overestimates can ultimately lead to a dangerous misallocation of scarce public resources.

Such overestimates have been especially problematic for New Orleans. According to the original census estimates for 2007, the city’s population stood at 239,124, which independent sources, like voter turnout and death records, indicate was a reasonable guess. But after heavy lobbying from then-Mayor Ray Nagin’s office — claiming the bureau’s methods missed large numbers of poor residents — the number was revised upward by about 20 percent, to 288,113.

A similarly successful challenge to the 2008 initial estimate led to yet another substantial uptick; combined, these revised estimates put the city on pace to recover almost all the residents it had lost after Hurricane Katrina within a few years.

Several of us living in the city, who were monitoring its repopulation rates, knew these figures were implausible. And yet city hall cheered the results.

Until, that is, the 2010 census count was released this year, showing the actual population size was almost 100,000 people smaller than what the revised numbers implied it should be — a psychological bucket of cold water thrown on a still-fragile city. The inflated estimates misled government, businesses and residents as they made life-altering decisions about where, when and how much to invest in the city’s recovery, and they diverted attention from some of the most serious problems that New Orleans was facing — and still faces — after the disaster.

Take, for example, the homicide rate. The revised estimates of population size diluted the city’s murder rate, since a larger population results in fewer murders per capita. The lower rate may have stemmed some damage to tourism and investment; certainly the numbers allowed the government to spend its precious resources on items other than public safety. But in reality, they obscured the fact that in the years after Katrina, New Orleans had not only the nation’s highest murder rate, but a rate never before recorded for any American city.

Had the Census Bureau held firm on its original estimates, the singularity of our murder morass would have been apparent, and we would have been better positioned to marshal the local, state and national resources required to fight it. An inability to effectively monitor our city’s population has likewise hampered New Orleans’s efforts to plan for our future health care needs, education needs and other essential services. Consultants have found, for example, that a hospital under construction is larger than needed for the number of people who actually live there.

Such over-adjustments are not limited to New Orleans. Of the 38 other successful challenges to census estimates in 2008, 78 percent resulted in a figure that now appears to have been too high.

No one should fault a city for cheering its own recovery, and cities should be free to challenge estimates that they suspect are too low — indeed, many challenges are initially correct. But the process has become politicized in a way that favors short-term interests: cities are often less concerned about getting the number right than in getting the number higher, leaving the resulting problems to subsequent administrations to sort out. Moreover, the Census Bureau is led by appointees without fixed terms, making them vulnerable to political pressure.

One immediate solution, then, would be to appoint bureau directors for five-year terms, which would help ensure that population figures are based on scientific evidence and would help limit political influence from elected officials, their constituents and special-interest groups.

Doing otherwise is no favor to the local jurisdiction requesting an uptick. The day of reckoning always comes, and in the meantime, cities like New Orleans are left without the data needed to direct scarce resources toward their most pressing problems.

Mark J. VanLandingham is a professor of sociology and demography at Tulane University.

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The Consequences of (Census) Budget Cuts

Saturday, July 16th, 2011

by Census Director Robert Groves
Posted on July 15, 2011

I have devoted much of this blog over the last two years to discussions about how the taxpayers who finance federal statistical findings can evaluate the quality of our work. Federal statistics play a critical role in our democracy, providing objective and documented measures of our economy and society. We often take these measures for granted, assuming that the federal statistical system will continue to provide timely, reliable, and relevant current measures of our economy and society as well as periodic benchmark measures.

Each year the Congress and the Executive Branch work to formulate a budget for the Federal government, including the Census Bureau. Given our nonpartisan mission, we are careful both to avoid any appearance of partisan views, and to be straight about the statistical and scientific consequences of budgetary decisions. To do otherwise would erode public confidence in the statistics themselves.

As the country continues to debate about its fiscal future, the budget spotlight this week came to focus on the Census Bureau. We began developing our Fiscal Year 2012 budget last spring. In formulating that budget, we reviewed our existing economic and demographic statistics programs and determined that we needed to terminate a number of existing programs such as the Current Industrial Reports program, the Statistical Abstract, and our foreign demographic analysis program to mention a few, in order to fund higher priority programs. In anticipation of tight spending limits, we have been making numerous cost efficiency moves throughout the Census Bureau. Last month we announced a decision to close six of our twelve regional offices. We have delayed filling hundreds of vacancies at our Suitland, Maryland headquarters, and have taken steps to achieve long term savings through consolidation of IT resources and innovative business processes. I have tortured readers of this blog by repeated notes about my beliefs that we must become more efficient to survive.

The President presented a Census Bureau budget to Congress that was a real 11% cut from our funding the previous year. The Appropriations Committee in the House of Representatives has taken the first official action on that proposal, and cut that proposed budget further by 16.5 percent; our periodic programs request was cut 21 percent. The next steps for our funding bill are to be considered and then passed by the full House, then sent to the Senate.

A cut of this magnitude in our periodic programs account means we cannot do all the work the Congress has asked us to do. Our ability to provide high quality and comprehensive statistical data will be severely diminished if we sustain such a large budget cut and we will be forced to cancel major programs that provide critical benchmark measures. This reduction also will force the layoffs of up to 700 employees from our headquarters workforce of almost 4,600. In addition to the personal hardships that would cause the hard working, dedicated employees of the Census Bureau, the loss of scientific, technical, and professional expertise that would result from losing such a high percentage of our workforce would have programmatic and data quality repercussions for years to come.

If you are reading this blog, you probably already know how the data provided by the Census Bureau underlies much about what we know about our economy and our people. For example, the Bureau of Economic Analysis uses the statistics from the Economic Census to benchmark Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates and prepare input-output tables – the fundamental tool for national and regional economic planning. During benchmark years such as 2012, about 90% of the data used in calculating GDP comes from the Census Bureau. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses Census Bureau statistics to benchmark producer price indexes and prepare productivity statistics. The Federal Reserve Board uses our statistics to prepare indexes of industrial production.

Businesses use our statistics for site location, industry and market analysis, to make investment and production decisions, to gauge competitiveness, and to identify entrepreneurial opportunities. Detailed industry information for small geographic areas permits state and local agencies to forecast economic conditions, plan economic development, transportation, and social services. Using our statistics, national and local news media report back to investors and the general public their personal evaluations of how well the economy is doing and how our society is changing.

We too are taxpayers, and we greatly appreciate these are difficult fiscal times. That is why we took steps to shrink our budget and find efficiencies that would not put our major, key surveys at risk. I will be writing more here as our funding legislation works its way through Congress.

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