Minkel, Scientific American. Most controversies relating to the Census Bureau have to do with the counting of minorities and other marginalized groups, such as the homeless, prisoners, and undocumented workers. According to the Constitution, the census should count everyone in the country. Attempts to bend that requirement inevitably arise, because the stakes are so high. The census determines the number of representatives elected from each state and the distribution of federal money among the states.
The Bureau counts prisoners in the districts in which they are incarcerated. Some argue that this practice is a violation of international treaty. The census was criticized for excluding one Native American in every eight. Because of the transient nature of many homeless people, it is virtually impossible to count the whole of this population and leads to distortion as to the nature of homelessness and the magnitude of the problem. In , the cities of Baltimore and San Francisco, along with homeless advocates, sued the Bureau, accusing it of deliberately setting out to undercount the homeless during its one-night count of street people for the census.
The census was the first time survey options for multiracial Americans were provided. Census Bureau. Kincannon retired on January 3, , after 6 years as director, and 29 years at the Census Bureau.
Kincannon was born in Waco, Texas, in In he earned an economics degree from the University of Texas, Austin, and continued postgraduate work in statistics and economics at George Washington University, Georgetown University and University of Maryland.
He took a position as a statistician at the U. Census Bureau in He left the Bureau in during the Ford administration, but returned upon the election of Ronald Reagan. Bush in and confirmed by the Senate on March 13, In November , Kincannon and his deputy director, Hermann Habermann, abruptly decided to quit, acknowledging tensions with their bosses in the Bush administration, but giving no other details.
He did stay on as acting director until the position was filled more than a year later. He died of cancer at the age of 72 on December 15, Barbara Everitt Bryant — the first woman to be named director of the Bureau. All Past Directors. President Barack Obama last week nominated a career statistician who spent more than 25 years at the U. Census Bureau before leaving for the private sector. If confirmed as expected by the Senate, John H.
Thompson would succeed Robert Groves , who served from June to August Born circa , Thompson earned a B. Thompson soon went to work at the Census Bureau, where he remained from to , working in the Statistical Methods Division from to and in the Statistical Support Division from to He was associate director for the decennial census and chief of the decennial management division. A member of the American Statistical Association since , Thompson was elected a fellow of the Association in , and chaired the Social Statistics Section in and the Committee on Fellows in Obama Nominates John H.
On April 2, , President Obama nominated Dr. Robert M. Groves to be the next Director of the Census Bureau and he was confirmed on July Groves, who will direct the Census , is a generally uncontroversial professor of sociology However, his nomination was contentious because his support for using statistical sampling , a statistical method commonly used to correct for errors and biases in the census, raised the ire of Republican critics , who believe that sampling would benefit minorities and the poor, who generally vote Democratic.
After serving for three years, Groves announced his resignation on April 10, , effective in August in order to take the position of provost of Georgetown University. Main Menu.
Back to Departments Back to Department of Commerce. Overview: Although the Census Bureau carries out hundreds of surveys every year, its most well-known duty is still to conduct the decennial census.
History: Because the census has been around for almost years, its results have been important in decision-making for the United States government since the nation was founded. The Decennial Census to What it Does: The Census Bureau collects data through surveys and conducts statistical analysis of the results to be used in policy-making decisions by the U. Population Clock Statistical Abstract of the United States : Published in print since , the Abstract has hundreds of statistical tables summarizing the social, political, and economic scene in the United States, as well as an international section.
H37 Discusses the factors that influenced the planning, implementation, and mobilization of the American public to participate in the Census. The Hard Count shows that a mobilization campaign can dramatically increase voluntary participation in the decennial headcount and identifies emerging social and political challenges that may threaten future census counts and contribute to the growing fragility of our national statistical system. Wright and William C. Hunt Call Number: HA U5 Available online from Hathi Trust External Available online from census.
Includes estimates of colonial population pre and historical review of the first eleven decennial censuses from to In appendices you can find Instructions to enumerators, details of schedules, i. Total cost of each census can also be found here. Measuring America: the Decennial Censuses from to Gauthier Call Number: HA U55 M Available online from the U.
Census Bureau Provides for each decennial census from to the questionnaires and instructions, individual histories of the U. Twenty censuses : population and housing questions, Call Number: HA U55U54 a. This publication gives the actual questions appearing on the census questionnaires for each of the decennial censuses and provide additional background information.
Who Counts? Eisenhower signed legislation in to change the name to Veterans Day to honor all those Census Bureau Director's Blog Earlier this year, President Biden announced a federal agenda to advance equity for all Americans, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality. America's Data Agency. The Hispanic American community is deeply rooted in the history of the United States and are an integral part of the rich fabric of our nation.
True to our mission of creating the conditions for economic growth and opportunity—for all Americans—the Commerce Department works every day to support and invest in the Hispanic business community to create jobs and promote economic growth. Over our Export and investment promotion. Intellectual property. Investing in communities and workers. Minority business growth. Hispanic Heritage Month. Manufacturing Week is designed to coincide with Manufacturing Day, which has been held the first Friday in October since In the early days, some people saw the census as an intrusion, an illiberal imposition, but they didn't really have the language of privacy to describe that.
The first inklings of privacy arose in respect of commercial statistics the census began to collect in ; businesspeople were worried that their competitors might learn their secrets. It was really in the late 19th and early 20th century that our current notion of privacy crystalized. The census—which was asking ever-more personal questions—responded by adopting a commitment to secrecy. I learned from your book that we have a census-worker to thank for early computing machines.
How has innovation changed the census? The logistics of reaching everybody and collecting their responses was always a challenge—and it continues to be. But for a long time, the compilation and analysis of responses was difficult, too. Thousands of clerks were employed to copy and condense this information, just to make a single table in a census publication.
It's hard to imagine anything else in the 19th century that compares to it: the census was the original Big Data. But as the number of questions and the population grew, this became increasingly difficult.
After the U. One bright young former census agent, Herman Hollerith, invented a machine to tabulate results by first encoding them in punch cards and then feeding those cards through an electric machine. It wasn't a computer, but the technology of punch cards underpinned computing up into the s, and the company Hollerith founded eventually became IBM.
I was surprised when filling out the census recently that it only included 9 questions. Previous iterations had dozens and dozens of questions. What accounts for that change? Where are governments getting the other information? First, well done on responding! The core census—the set of questions asked of every household—has been very short since about , never asking more than about ten questions.
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