Dr. Pete on the Census
12/04/2011
Dr. Pete
Dear Dr. Pete:
Ten years seems like an awfully long time to have between censuses, I mean anything can happen and we just wouldn’t know about it until the next census.
-W A Weaver
Dear W A:
What you know about your population in between censuses depends very much on how much surveillance a government puts on their people and the communication between the various agencies. Take the example of a country that requires its citizens to register their living place, requires the registration of births and deaths, and has strict border controls. This country, assuming it at one time had a good census count, could project its current population well. Join it up with income tax records, school leaving qualifications, etc. and you start to have quite a full picture of the population.
Take a country that doesn’t have all of these things and it starts to become problematical. In the UK, for example, there is no requirement to tell anyone where you live or indeed to tell anyone you’re leaving the country. Citizens of other EU countries are free to come and go, live, and work as they please. In this case, we see the sort of consternation we saw after the 2001 census when the final count came up with 58.7 million when population projections at the time were estimating over 60 million. Does it matter? Well of course it affects any official data based on the population – unemployment figures, GDP per capita, productivity estimates, etc. Changes in these can have a profound effect on consumer confidence, on international business confidence, on projections of future needs, and even in confidence in the government of the day.
So what can you do? In the US, you may have heard of the American Community Survey, an annual survey conducted by the Census Bureau. Big deal you might think, Census Bureau does a lot of surveys. Not many as big as this one, upwards of 3 million interviews per year – mandatory just like the census. Whatever your views on whether the ACS is constitutional or not, it provides ongoing data on the shape of the nation and hopefully will save the Census Bureau the embarrassment of “losing” 5 million people next year.
Couple all this rich data with what is, to British eyes in particular, a profound respect for freedom of information and, as a researcher, I have to say it is a fantastic source of data on the US. It’s so rich in fact that if I’m searching for the median income of Sweden (the country that is) I’m more likely to get results for Sweden, Maine, or Sweden, New York, than Sweden, Sweden.
-Dr. Pete
Dear Dr. Pete:
Census gives us a great way of tracking change in society, doesn’t it?
-F A Walker
Dear FA:
Yes. But unlike many of our modern tracking studies, the Census has been willing to move with the times and change its questions when they no longer give good data. Otherwise it would still be asking questions like these (from 1790):
- Name of head of family
- Number of free white males 16 and up, including heads of families
- Number of free white males under 16
- Number of free white females including heads of families
- Number of all other free persons, except Indians not taxed
- Number of slaves
There’s almost as much to be read into the questions themselves as the data they supply.
We saw in the 1790 questions an implicit assumption that slaves would be non-white and indeed the implication that anything not white could be lumped together as “other.” By 1860, the question of color had changed to white, black, or mulatto. By 1890 this had expanded to white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. How does this reflect our forebears’ changing thinking and emphasis?
-Dr. Pete
Dear Dr. Pete:
America is a fairly young country; you Europeans must have been doing censuses since, like, forever – right?
-R V Peel
Dear R V:
Oddly enough, the US has one of the oldest traditions of census in the world. The first was in 1790, less than 20 years after the formation of the nation. Looking at a map of Europe in 1790, only 4 countries are recognisably within the same borders as they are today: Portugal, Spain, France, and Great Britain. Portugal’s first census was in 1868, Spain’s first modern census was in 1768. Great Britain’s first in 1801 and France’s in 1836.
Why not earlier? Well of course feudal and societies have little need for a census, either for military or for taxation purposes. The disposition of people was known to the aristocracy, since they essentially owned it and all the wealth as well. Only societies comprised in the main of free men have a need for a census, thus explaining why Roman society was conducting a census in 500 BC! But why around 1800? Politicians at the time were much taken by the work of Thomas Malthus whose 1798 work, An essay on the principle of population, postulated that population would outstrip the Earth’s ability to feed it. Governments concerned about this desperately need to know, precisely, their populations and demographic dynamics.
The United States’ need for a Census stems from its electoral system of apportionment of seats in Congress and Electoral College Votes. Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the nation, wrote in 1792 of the “rotten boroughs” in his native England: “The county of Yorkshire, which contains near a million souls, sends two county members; and so does the county of Rutland which contains not a hundredth part of that number. The town of Old Sarum, which contains not three houses, sends two members; and the town of Manchester, which contains upwards of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any. Is there any principle in these things?”
-Dr. Pete
Dear Dr. Pete:
Why not just do a big sample? Would save us a lot of money, wouldn’t it?
-W M Steuart
Dear W M:
It sure would. I read that census 2000 cost about $15.99 per interview. You might think that’s good value for a 10 minute interview with a 38 minute boost sample but don’t forget the n is around 300,000,000 – total costs were $4.5 billion.
Lots of countries do a sampled “micro-census” – the Netherlands, Germany, and France, for example. The big stumbling block to doing the same in the US is the apportionment. Although we may all think that survey researchers have the highest ethical standards, we all know that surveys can be manipulated, and since we, after all, are mainly responsible for a lot of that “well they would find that wouldn’t they” research you see published in the papers, perhaps it’s not surprising that there is concern. If the census is under the control of the current ruling party the fear is that the census results will be manipulated to keep that party in power longer. The other concern is that sampling error alone will result in more instances like Utah vs. Evans with States losing and gaining Representatives.
-Dr. Pete
Dear Dr. Pete:
What’s your favourite Census stat?
-T Jefferson
Dear T:
It’s got to be the population centre of gravity which appeals to both my researcher mind and my love of geography. Currently it’s located in Phelps County, Missouri, and has been moving gently westwards and latterly south-westwards since first computed as being in Kent County, Baltimore.
Of course if there is a mean centre of gravity there has to be a median centre also, currently located in Louisville, Kentucky. This, for some reason, is deemed not so interesting.
-Dr. Pete
