Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency Seventh Edition (2021) / Chapter Skim
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THE VALUE OF NATIONAL STATISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES
THE VALUE OF NATIONAL STATISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES
Pages 9-16
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From page 9... ...
Making every vote count requires that lawmakers have accurate population statistics for drawing up legislative districts. Identifying problems to address and opportunities to pursue requires that policy makers in both the governmental and private sectors have objective and timely information on the society and economy.
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From page 10... ...
. In that regard, national statistical information forms a data infrastructure that resembles the role of physical infrastructure for a nation, like interstate highways, national defense assets, interstate utility grids, and basic scientific research.
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From page 11... ...
The federal government currently labels 36 statistics -- such as gross domestic product (GDP) , the employment situation, monthly wholesale trade, weekly natural gas storage, crop production, consumer credit, and others -- as "principal federal economic indicators." 2 The Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's)
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From page 12... ...
The U.S. and global economies are powered by data.4 Whether starting or expanding a business, exploring prospects for different occupations, anticipating demand for products, projecting the labor force, evaluating effects of trade patterns, targeting investments, forecasting energy prices, planning for hurricanes, funding pension plans, devising better ways to serve customers with disabilities, or finding suppliers -- business owners and community members rely every day on data produced by the federal government.
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From page 13... ...
Regularly published social and economic indicators from statistical agencies are widely cited in the media and consulted by the public to identify trends and, when estimates are available for state and local areas, to compare across areas. Some examples include America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being from the Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics; the Condition of Education from the National Center for Education Statistics; Criminal Victimization from the Bureau of Justice Statistics; Statistics of Income from the IRS; Income and Poverty in the United States from the U.S.
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From page 14... ...
Even including the once-a-decade population census, the combined budgets for all the major statistical agencies and other statistical programs in federal agencies in fiscal 2020 totaled $11.9 billion.8 This amount is about 0.2 percent of the total budget of about $4.8 trillion for the federal government, and it is equivalent to about $36 for every U.S. resident.9 The benefits from this investment in federal data collection and statistics permeate every corner of the United States.
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The fundamental characteristic of federal statistics as a public good (see Box I-1) and the demonstrated policy, planning, research, and informational value of today's portfolio of statistical programs justify adequate budgets for federal statistics.
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From page 16... ...
) use federal CPI information for market-basket weights and benchmarking, and public opinion polls and marketing surveys use federal statistics on gen der, age, ethnicity, and other characteristics to adjust the raw data to represent population groups.
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