Letter Report on the 2020 Census (2018) / Chapter Skim
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established a Task Force on the 2020 Census to consider challenges for the Census Bureau in conducting the 2020 decennial census. CNSTAT, which was established in 1972, has provided assistance to the country on the methods used in the decennial census at the behest of Congress or the U.S.
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3. Adding the citizenship question and using the method described in the Secretary's memo and the Census Bureau's review would create a new population register, which has unclear statistical purposes and which could not, under current law, be used for nonstatistical purposes, such as law enforcement against individuals, and still comport with the mission of the Census Bureau: The Secretary's decision memorandum suggests an intent to use census responses to "correct" or validate citizenship status in administrative records data, and the documentation of the Secretary's decision directly states that the option ultimately chosen by the Secretary was intended to use 2020 census responses to supplement a "comprehensive statistical reference list of current U.S.
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94-73) , Congress has explicitly vested authority in the director of the Census Bureau to make such determinations, emphasizing that the director's determinations "shall be effective upon publication in the Federal Register and shall not be subject to review in any court." In 2006, the law was amended to explicitly make "the 2010 American Community Survey census data and subsequent American Community Survey data in 3
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Similarly, state-of-the-art statistical models using ACS data produced the 2016 Section 203 determinations, successfully implementing these requirements throughout the decade, and there is no reason to expect that modeling could not be successfully used to produce valid estimates for other sections of the act. Adding the Citizenship Question Without Proper Testing Will Impair the Quality of the 2020 Census as a Whole That a citizenship question has been included in decennial censuses as early as 1820 or in the ACS for a decade does not constitute sufficient evidence to argue that it is a tested and proven method of measurement for the 2020 census.
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(Enumerators will also use paper questionnaires to interview households in remote areas, such as remote Alaska.) Though an objective of the 2020 census is to reduce the NRFU field workload through recourse to administrative records data from other federal government sources, the quality of citizenship information in those administrative data is known (and acknowledged, explicitly, in the Secretary's decision memorandum)
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However, the necessary modifications to these procedures to handle the citizenship question would be untested and could raise doubts about the quality of the data should levels of nonresponse be greater than in past censuses. Of key importance is that the Census Bureau relies on the cooperation of the public to participate in the decennial census and has effectively employed advertising and outreach through partnerships with localities and local organizations in the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
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In short, then, our decades of census observation strongly suggests that the addition of the citizenship question at this stage, without proper testing and consideration of all its likely effects, would be an unwise attempt to increase the perceived precision of one data item to the detriment of the quality of the census as a whole. Adding the Citizenship Question and Using the Method Described in the Secretary's Memo and the Census Bureau's Review Would Create a New Population Register, Which Has Unclear Statistical Purposes and Which Could Not, Under Current Law, Be Used for Nonstatistical Purposes, Such as Law Enforcement Against Individuals, and Still Comport with the Mission of the Census Bureau The Secretary's decision memorandum rejects the option of relying solely on administrative or third-party data for citizenship, citing then-unpublished Census Bureau analysis of matched 2010 census/ACS and administrative records data showing (in the Secretary's words)
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So described, the chosen Alternative D is not a "reinstatement" of a citizenship question to the decennial census for statistical purposes but rather the intended use of census responses as seed data to construct an ongoing citizenship status registry, something never before proposed as a task for the Census Bureau, an agency solely devoted to statistical uses of data. Although some European countries have population registries, the United States has resisted the creation of an individual-level population register for statistical or other purposes.
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Proceeding with the inclusion of the citizenship question to the 2020 census as currently planned, without proper preliminary testing and analysis, without a clear demonstration of the need for the information beyond what is already collected through the ACS, and without a sound justification for creating a "comprehensive statistical reference list," goes against these principles. This endeavor risks undermining the credibility of the Census Bureau and the decennial census, the trust of its respondents, and the independence of the Census Bureau's professional staff to develop, produce, and disseminate objective information while protecting confidentiality of respondents.
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Attachment A Membership of the CNSTAT Task Force on the 2020 Census Attachment B Reviewer Acknowledgments Attachment C Historical Treatment of Citizenship in the Decennial Census and the American Community Survey Attachment D References Attachment E Committee on National Statistics' Reports on the Decennial Census and the American Community Survey 10
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