Abstract
The article documents some key events in the development of “statistics in the public interest” in the US federal statistical system since the eighteenth century and the long-standing and productive ties between the political system and the statistical profession.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In the Constitutional Convention that ambiguity was evident as the framers struggled to “operationalize” their new government and provide concrete mechanisms for setting the thing in motion. The most obvious are the ordered election procedures, for Representatives, Senators, and the President. Even then though, the reliance on the procedures and traditions in the existing states indicated the framers’ reticence with departing too greatly from the traditions within the states. Two senators were allocated to each state. The state legislatures chose the 2 senators for each state. The state legislatures chose the electors to the Electoral College who formally chose the President. Only in the case of members of the House of Representatives did the “people” vote directly for an individual who would serve in national office. Voter qualifications and the timing of elections for Senators and Representatives were also left to the state legislatures.
.
- 2.
The literature is voluminous, and a thorough catalog is beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, in addition to the studies cited infra, see, for example, Fisher (1992); Citro and Michaels (1995) on poverty measurement; (Lopresti (2017) on statistics on women and gender; Hochschild and Powell (2008); Mezey (2003); Morning (2008); Nobles (2000); Perlmann (2018); Perlmann (2001); Perlmann and Waters, eds. (2002); Prewitt (2013); Rodriguez (2000); Samhan (1999); Schor (2017); and Williams (2006) on race, ethnic, and immigrant classification issues. On international comparisons and public policy, see, for example, Curtis (2001); Desrosières (1998); Patriarca (1996); Glass and Victor (1978); Higgs (1989); Deacon (1985); and Alonso and Starr, ed. (1987).
- 3.
Ross claimed that in December 2017, the Justice Department requested that he “reinstate a citizenship question on the decennial census to provide census block level citizenship voting age population (“CVAP”) data that are not currently available from government survey data.” The Justice Department claimed that “having these data at the census block level will permit more effective enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. See Secretary Wilbur Ross to Karen Dunn Kelley, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, March 26, 2018, available at https://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/2018-03-26_2.pdf
- 4.
The former directors continued: “It is highly risky to ask untested questions in the context of the complete 2020 Census design. There is a great deal of evidence that even small changes in survey question order, wording, and instructions can have significant, and often unexpected, consequences for the rate, quality, and truthfulness of response. The effect of adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census on data quality and census accuracy, therefore, is completely unknown. Also of import, overcoming unexpected obstacles that arise as 2020 Census operations unfold would add to the cost, without assurances that such efforts would yield a more accurate outcome.” For the text of the letter see Vincent P. Barabba (1973–1976; 1979–1981); Martha Farnsworth Riche (1994–1998); Kenneth Prewitt (1998–2001); Steven H. Murdock (2008–2009); Robert M. Groves (2009–2012); John Thompson (2013–2017) to Wilbur L. Ross, January 26, 2018 available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2018/03/27/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/DOJ_census_ques_request_Former_Directors_ltr_to_Ross.pdf.
- 5.
A revised version of the address with commentary is available in the Harvard Data Science Review. https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/
References
Alonso William and Paul Starr (1987) The Politics of Numbers (Population of the United States in the 1980s: A Census Monograph Series). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Anderson, Margo (2015). The American Census: A Social History, second ed. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Anderson, Margo (1988). The American Census: A Social History, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Margo Anderson and. Fienberg, Stephen E. (1999a). Who Counts? The Politics of Census Taking in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Anderson, Margo and Fienberg, Stephen E. (1999b). “The History of the First American Census and the Constitutional Language on Censustaking: Report of a Workshop,” Report to the Donner Foundation <http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/~fienberg/DonnerReports> July, 1999.
Margo Anderson and Seltzer, William, (2009) “Federal Statistical Confidentiality and Business Data: Twentieth Century Challenges and Continuing Issues,” Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality 1 (Spring 2009), 7–52; Comment on Article by Anderson and Seltzer, by C. L. Kincannon, 53–54; Rejoinder by M. Anderson and W. Seltzer, 55–58.
Bailyn, Bernard (1967). The Origin of American Politics. New York Vintage Books, 1967.
Balinski, Michel and Young, H. Peyton (1982). Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Bonnen, James (1984). “Federal Statistical Coordination Today: A Disaster or a Disgrace,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly/Health and Society, 62 (1984), 1–41.
Cassedy, J. (1969). Demography in Early America: Beginnings of the Statistical Mind, 1600–1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Citro, Constance F. and Michaels, Robert T., eds. (1995). Measuring Poverty: A New Approach, Washington, D.C., National Academy Press.
Cohen, Patricia Cline (1982). A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Curtis, Bruce (2001) The Politics of Population: State Formation, Statistics and the Census of Canada, 1840-1875. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Deacon, Desley (1985). “Political Arithmetic: The Nineteenth-Century Australian Census and the Construction of the Dependent Woman,” Signs, vol. 11, no. 1 (1985), 27–47.
Department of Commerce, et al. v . New York, et al. (2019) https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-966_bq7c.pdf
Desrosières, Alain. (1998) The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning, Translated by Camille Naish. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Duncan, Joseph, and Shelton, William (1978) Revolution in United States Government Statistics, 1926-1976. Washington, D.C.: GPO.
Dwight, Sereno Edwards (Boreas). (1812). “Slave Representation”, New Haven, No publisher, 1812, first appeared as two essays in the Connecticut Journal, New Haven.
Fisher, Gordon (1992). “The Development and History of the Poverty Thresholds.” Social Security Bulletin. 55 (Winter 1992): 3–14.
Fitzpatrick, Paul J. (1957). “Statistical Societies in the United States in the Nineteenth Century.” Author(s): The American Statistician, Vol. 11, No. 5 (Dec., 1957), 13–21. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2682565
David Victor Glass, David Victor (1978) Numbering the People: the Eighteenth-Century Population Controversy and the Development of Census and Vital Statistics in Britain (London: Gordon & Cremonesi.
Goldberg, Joseph P. and Moye, William T. (1985). The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Washington, D.C., GPO.
Griffith, Elmer (1907). The Rise and Development of the Gerrymander. Chicago, Scott, Foresman and Company.
Grofman, Bernard, ed. (1998). Race and Redistricting in the 1990s. New York: Agathon Press.
Grofman, Bernard and Arend Lijphart, eds. (1986). Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences. New York, Agathon Press.
Heyde, C.C. (2001). “John Graunt,” in Heyde, C., & Seneta, E. Statisticians of the Centuries. New York: Springer, 14–16.
Higgs, Eddy (1989) Making Sense of the Census: The Manuscript Returns for England and Wales, 1801-1901. London : H.M.S.O.
Hochschild, Jennifer L. and Brenna Marea Powell (2008) “Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850-1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican,” in Studies in American Political Development, 22 (Spring 2008), 59–96.
John, Richard (1995). Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Kousser, J. Morgan (1999). Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.
Leiby, James (1960). Carroll Wright and Labor Reform: The Origins of Labor Statistics. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Lewis, Jan (1995). “‘Of Every Age Sex & Condition’: The Representation of Women in the Constitution,” Journal of the Early Republic. 15 (Fall 1995): 359–87.
Lopresti, R. (2017). When Women Didn’t Count: The Chronic Mismeasure And Marginalization Of American Women In Federal Statistics. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger.
Mezey, Naomi (2003) “Erasure and Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination“ Northwestern University Law Review. 97 (2003), 1701–1768.
Morgan, Edmund (1988). Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, New York: Norton.
Morning, Ann (2008) “Ethnic Classification in Global Perspective: A Cross-National Survey of the 2000 Census Round,” Population Research and Policy Review, 27, 2 (2008), 239–272
National Research Council. 2004. The 2000 Census: Counting Under Adversity. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10907.
National Research Council. 1995. Modernizing the U.S. Census. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/4805.
Nobles, Melissa (2000) Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Norwood, Janet (1995). Organizing to Count: Change in the Federal Statistical System. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press.
Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards (1978). A Framework for Planning U.S. Federal Statistics in the 1980’s. Washington, D.C.: GPO.
Parmelee, Julius (1910–11). “The Statistical Work of the Federal Government.” Yale Review, 19 (November 1910/February 1911): 289–308; 374–91.
Patriarca, Silvana. (1996) Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-century Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Perlmann, Joel (2018). America Classifies The Immigrants : From Ellis Island To The 2020 Census. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Perlmann, Joel (2001) ‘Race or People’: Federal Race Classifications for Europeans in America, 1898–1913 (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Levy Economics Institute.
Perlmann Joel and Mary Waters, eds. (2002) The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press.
Porter, Theodore. (1986). The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Prewitt, Kenneth (2013) What Is Your Race?: The Census And Our Flawed Efforts To Classify Americans. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
President’s Commission on Federal Statistics (1971). Report of the President’s Commission (2 vols.), Washington, DC: GPO.
Rodriguez, Clara (2000) Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. New York: New York University Press.
Samhan, Helen (1999) “Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab-American Experience.” in Arabs in America: Building a New Future. Michael W. Suleiman, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Schmeckebier, Laurence F. and Weber, Gustavus A. (1924). The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce: Its History, Activities and Organization, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1924; reprinted 1974, AMS Press, NY.
Schor, Paul. (2017). Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified The Nation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Seybert, Adam (1818). Statistical Annals. Philadelphia, Thomas Dobson & Son, 1818; reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, 1970.
Simpson, Albert F. (1941). “The Political Significance of Slave Representation, 1787-1821,” Journal of Southern History, 7 (1941): 315–42.
Smith, Darrell Hevenor (1923). The Bureau of Education: Its History, Activities and Organization, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1923.
Stigler, Stephen. (1986). The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Sullivan, Teresa. (2019). “Coming to Our Census: How Social Statistics Underpin Our Democracy (and Republic). Paper presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings, August 2019, Denver, DO. Available at https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2019/webcasts/.
Taylor, Henry C. and Taylor, Anne Dewees (1952). The Story of Agricultural Economics in the United States. 1840-1932, Ames, IA: Iowa State College Press.
U. S. Bureau of the Census (1999). Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1998. Washington, D.C.: GPO.
Warren, Donald (1974). To Enforce Education: A History of Founding Years of the United States Office of Education , Detroit, Wayne State University Press.
Williams, Kim (2006) Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006).
Wood, Gordon (1969). The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Wood, Gordon (1992). The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: A.A. Knopf.
Zagarri, Rosemarie (1987). The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776-1850. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Anderson, M. (2022). The History of “The Politics of Population” in the United States. In: Carriquiry, A.L., Tanur, J.M., Eddy, W.F. (eds) Statistics in the Public Interest. Springer Series in the Data Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75460-0_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75460-0_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-75459-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-75460-0
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)