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Next Release of U.S. 2020 Census Data Postponed Until Next Year

3 May 2022 9:07 AM | Anonymous

The next release of detailed data about U.S. residents from the 2020 census will be postponed until next year because the U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday that it needs more time to crunch the numbers, including implementing a controversial method used to protect participants’ identities.

The delays leave government budget-makers, city planners and researchers in a lurch because the detailed data are used for planning future growth, locating schools or firehouses and research.

NOTE: Today's announcement has nothing to do with the release of residents' names, ages, addresses, and other personal information. By law, that information will not be released for 72 years (in 2092). Instead, today's announcement refers only to such items as American Housing Survey Table Creator, Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) Explorer, Census COVID-19 Data Hub, Census Flows Mapper, Data Equity Tools, and similar aggregate information.

Comments

  • 4 May 2022 7:18 AM | Anonymous
    When I worked for Social Security, we had some folks come to us and demonstrate how they could de-anonomize individuals using our public aggregate data products. Things like beneficiaries by zip code, by type and other similar products could be used to identify specific individuals, sometimes just by our datasets themselves, sometimes in conjunction with other public data. Was quite the buzz when it happened, the actuary's people and hired outsiders confirmed and we had to make changes in to keep this from happening. No different here. And folks who were data dweebs were not happy but it had to be done.
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