Search Results

This chapter discusses the impact of IT on the work of the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Bureau of the Census, and the US Postal Service (USPS). All three organizations extensively use information technology, in fact, to such an extent that it would be difficult to imagine how they could function in the future without its use. How each came to such a point reflects various experiences unique to each agency. The rate of adoption and extent of deployment reflects internal operational and managerial issues and as with other federal agencies and departments, digital tools had to be configured in ways specific to their needs.

This chapter calls for very specific changes in the census race and ethnic questions. The strategy depends on a close understanding of the political and technical landscape. It is often the fine print that has to be changed to bring about change. In the case of census race questions the fine print is knowing exactly what is being asked by the Census Bureau, when it is asked, and on which of its many different surveys. Powerful political constituencies are wedded to the current statistical races, especially the well-organized African Americans and Hispanics. Commercial interests are organized around familiar race data, which they use for product placement and location of retail outlets. These and other sources of resistance contribute to what social science describes as the self-reinforcing tendencies of political and social institutions.

This chapter places research carried out for this section of the volume in the perspective of US attempts to measure poverty as well as work carried out at the Census Bureau to implement an improved poverty measure. This section of the book considers additional noncash resources available to individuals. These are important for the construction of a more complete measure of resources for use in poverty and inequality analysis. In many cases, the details do not change our picture of the trend in poverty, or even the comparisons across countries, but they often change the composition of the poor. It is stated that the Census Bureau has constructed alternative measures of poverty for the United States, which include either the same or similar adjustments to those considered in this section of the book. However, when many of these adjustments are made to the measure of resources available to individuals, they do not alter rankings of the extent of inequality across countries or change trends in poverty over time. Thus, a reasonable question is whether the aim should be to have total detail or an approximation of what is happening.

This chapter uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey to provide an extensive description and discussion of aggregate and demographic group-specific turnout rates since 1972, focusing on education, income, race, ethnicity, age, gender, and marital status. Among the findings is that voter turnout in presidential elections since 1972 has not declined systematically. Instead, it has been slightly higher in some elections, and slightly lower in other elections. Second, the relationships among income, education, and voter turnout are quite strong: the probability of a highly educated or wealthy individual casting a ballot is much, much higher than the probability of a less-educated or poorer individual casting a ballot. Third, these differences in turnout have been remarkably stable over this thirty-six-year period. Fourth, there is less stability in turnout patterns by age, gender, and ethnicity since 1972 compared to those of education and income.

This chapter reports a detailed documentation of the Longitudinal Employer-Households Dynamics Program (LEHD) data sources and the methods used to construct the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). It provides a valuable reference source for users of the QWI and the LEHD. The procedures implemented in the LEHD Infrastructure Files to detect, edit, and manage entity identifiers are addressed. The wage record editing process takes place in a secure computing area distinct from the rest of the LEHD processing. The edits and imputations associated with missing job-level data are explained. The three time series reveal considerable seasonality, but job creations and recalls are considerably more variable. The Census Bureau maintains lists of establishments to develop the frames for economic censuses and surveys. Finally, some of the ongoing efforts to enhance the LEHD Infrastructure Files are discussed.

This chapter discusses the Census Bureau’s external relations. It covers the publicity programs directed specifically toward ethnic groups; the agency’s use of marketing techniques for targeted campaigns and tools such as photography, films, and radio; the wide public outreach achieved by presidential proclamations announcing the date of each census; the positive experiences of census agents in the field; the agency’s provision of personal information to the FBI or to other government agencies despite the existence of confidentiality clauses; and the Census Bureau’s active participation in discrimination against and persecution of US residents via the deportation of Americans of Japanese origin after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This chapter argues that government in America became complex and large, requiring more varied types of information, just as did large commercial enterprises. It describes how three agencies used information: Bureau of the Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Bureau of Economic Analysis, followed by a discussion of how government used information in World War I and during the Great Depression. It includes a discussion of the role of public opinion surveys and the role of universities in creating and using information. Opinion surveys evolved into a complex form of information in the twentieth century that influenced profoundly how politicians and public officials functioned and in how people shaped their opinions about politics and government. American universities became massive creators of new information, while themselves expanding into large institutions. Growth in the size of public and private institutions and how they were able to create new bodies of information were linked to the attitudes people had toward information and to their increased reliance on information handling tools, such as telephones, books, and data processing equipment.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the Census Bureau and African Americans. In the first half of the twentieth century, the history of the agency’s relations with the black population was one of an incomplete transformation. For the census, blacks were the most objectified inhabitants, to the point that slaves were deprived of names to become numbers in the population statistics, and the ones least likely to be viewed as subjects. At the same time, blacks as a category were always the object of particular attention in census reports. The chapter also describes the growing involvement of black authors and statisticians in publications for the black population; the career of Charles E. Hall with respect to the census, who became the first African American to be given supervisory responsibilities over black employees; and the Census Bureau’s relations with the African American business community.

This chapter discusses the reasons why a bill proposing a children's bureau never reached the floor of Congress. Opponents argued that a children's bureau would be unconstitutional, because it would give the federal government jurisdiction over state and local agencies concerned with child welfare. Moreover, they maintained, a children's bureau would duplicate the work of other government agencies, particularly the Bureau of Education and the Census Bureau, which could carry out legitimate federal responsibilities more effectively. Such a bureau, they argued, would also interfere with the functions and privacy of the family. Senator Weldon Heyburn of Idaho warned “we have sometimes an oversupply of sympathy...for the children whose condition in life is not as favorable as that of some other children. Our sympathies are human; you cannot avoid them; but those clothed with the responsibility of government must be on guard against being swept away on unsafe seas of legislation.”

This chapter addresses the entry and exit of establishments and firms in the U.S. retail sector based on analysis of the Census Bureau's newly developed Longitudinal Business Database (LBD). It demonstrates that firm turnover has declined over time in most retail industries but differs systematically by market size and ownership structure. Metro areas have the highest producer turnover while rural areas have the lowest. Independently-owned stores experience higher turnover compared to chain stores. Single location retail firms have on average increased in size since 1976. The firm exit rates are highest in metropolitan markets and slightly higher in micropolitan markets than in rural markets. The mom-and-pop stores have the largest exit rates, regardless of industry or unit of measure. Chain stores and mom-and-pop stores appear to be able to coexist in some industries better than others.

This chapter discusses the role of women in the history of the US census. Beginning with the 1920 census, and with women gaining the right to vote that same year, the Census Bureau began devoting considerable effort to women in two distinct directions: first, by making housewives a focus of attention as the interviewees of census workers and the repository of their husbands’ information; and second, more discreetly, by recruiting a growing number of women as census workers and supervisors. Women who worked in the Census Bureau in Washington served several purposes: demonstrating to all that the agency was a great modern enterprise, but also, and more specifically, attracting more applicants. As was the case for African Americans, the information furnished on the activity of women in the Census Bureau—photographs in particular—reveals sex segregation in jobs at the very heart of the agency.

An ongoing debate in the United States concerns the costs imposed by environmental regulations on industry. This chapter explores some of the costs associated with air quality regulation, focusing on regulation pertaining to ground-level ozone and its effects on two industries sensitive to such regulation: industrial organic chemicals and miscellaneous plastic products. Both of these industries are major emitters of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, the chemical precursors to ozone. Using plant-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), the chapter analyzes the effects this type of regulation has had on the timing and magnitudes of investments by firms in these industries and on their operating costs. As an alternative way to assess costs, it also employs plant-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey.

This introductory chapter discusses the coverage of this volume about the proposed new architecture of the U.S. national accounts and the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs). The chapters in this volume are from the proceedings of the conference “A New Architecture for the U.S. National Accounts” held in Washington D.C. on April 16–17, 2004. This chapter describes the features of the new architecture and discusses the role of various government agencies including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, the Census Bureau and the Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

This chapter describes the importance of the census for public health. The US Constitution mandates that each resident of the country be counted at least every 10 years. As the 2020 census approached, the Trump administration launched an effort to meddle with how to perform this head count, by adding a question about citizenship to the census. This move was roundly criticized by the Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory committee and became the target of lawsuits. It looked very much like an attempt to depress the 2020 population count in immigrant-rich and predominantly Democratic areas, in advance of redistricting in 2021. Accurate census data are critical for the public's health. These data drive federal grants to states for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. They guide disaster response and disease outbreak planning. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses census information to locate geographic areas with low education levels and high poverty rates, so as to expand screening and outreach programs. Thus, these data inform the building of roads, schools, and health centers. As such, political moves to influence the census is a matter of great concern for public health.

This chapter reviews developments from 1940 to 2000. Among these is the increased awareness of the census. On the one hand, the Census Bureau itself published for every census an administrative history (called Procedural History) of the census; on the other hand, sociology and political science adopted the goal and, since the 1960s, have focused considerable attention on categories of race and ethnicity, especially the so-called “ethnoracial pentagon”—the five major categories defined by the federal administration as those which government agencies should utilize. In 1980, the creation of an “Ancestry” category reflected the evolution toward more open questions, giving more room for the perceptions that people had of themselves. The 2000 census, after long negotiations, approved the recognition of multiracial families by offering, for the first time, the possibility of checking off more than one race on the schedule.