1996 Ad

American Demographics, July, 1996 by Diane Crispell

One of the many ways in which the government is trying to save money is by cutting down on the amount of information that federal statistical agencies offer. In some cases, this means never collecting the data to begin with, which is another story altogether. But in other cases, the crackdown is on data analysis and dissemination. This is like growing corn, harvesting it, putting it in silos, then letting it sit and rot.

For example, the National Center for Health Statistics no longer has the resources to provide anything but the most basic numbers describing marriage and divorce in the U.S. People will still be required to provide information about their age and other characteristics on marriage and divorce certificates, and the certificates will still be filed at county offices. Some states will still compile these data for their own purposes, but others will stop because the federal government is no longer paying them to do so. Some large national surveys can capture similar information, but we have lost access to existing administrative records that track the number of children involved in divorces, age at first marriage, second marriages, duration of marriages, and other social trends.

The Census Bureau's mission statement says that the bureau's role is to collect the data its constituents need and provide them in a timely manner. It says nothing about analyzing or interpreting the data, and the bureau is actively cutting back on these functions. But the fact is that providing data in any sort of usable format requires a certain level of analysis and interpretation.

Hard-core researchers find it wonderfully convenient to download subsets of raw Current Population Survey data from the Census Bureau's Internet site. But most users never have been, and never will be, equipped to make heads or tails of data in this undigested format. Most people just want to know basic things like the number of dual-earner couples or whether blacks are making gains in educational attainment. They are content to buy ready-made, because they don't have the time or knowledge it takes to make the decisions themselves.

Furthermore, the task of collecting data itself requires multitudes of decisions based on expert knowledge. By the time the National Center for Health Statistics gets around to interviewing people about their nutritional intake, its staff has already done a great deal of methodological research to develop questions that will yield the most accurate results. And when Census Bureau demographers produced the population projections on page 6 of this issue, they were not indulging in whimsical what-if explorations; they drew on their expertise in fertility, mortality, and immigration trends to provide a thoughtful scenario of the future.

It's impossible to draw a line that shows where data collection ends and analysis begins. It's all of a piece. It may be politically correct for federal statistical agencies to say that their focus is more on data collection than on analysis and interpretation. Fortunately, it's not entirely true.

                            Budget Cuts