Differential Privacy and Census Data: Implications for Social and Economic Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 403-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Ruggles ◽  
Catherine Fitch ◽  
Diana Magnuson ◽  
Jonathan Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Census Data ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Free Access ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Disclosure Control ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Area Data

The Census Bureau has announced new methods for disclosure control in public use data products. The new approach, known as differential privacy, represents a radical departure from current practice. In its pure form, differential privacy techniques may make the release of useful microdata impossible and limit the utility of tabular small-area data. Adoption of differential privacy will have far-reaching consequences for research. It is likely that scientists, planners, and the public will lose the free access we have enjoyed for six decades to reliable public Census Bureau data describing US social and economic change.

Public Opinion Research in Government

1949 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold F. Gosnell ◽  
Moyca C. David
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Public Opinion Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
The Government ◽  
Radio Programs

The actual use of polling techniques by the federal government falls far short of what one eminent social scientist, Julian L. Woodward, foresees for the future. He says: “Sooner or later, the government itself will have to go into the polling field and provide both its administrators and its legislators with adequate and sound information on what the public thinks. Eventually this sort of information will become as necessary as census data and will be provided by an agency with a reputation for unbiased research equal to that now enjoyed by the present Census Bureau.”While the potentialities of public opinion research in the government have only begun to be exploited, administrators and even legislators, who characteristically have been more hostile toward polling, have found methods of testing public opinion answerable to their needs. In accord with their purposes, they have used public opinion surveys to sample a small group of leaders, a large group, or the total population. They have been concerned also with content analysis of the press and of radio programs. The usefulness of attitude surveys was established particularly during the war and has continued since in a somewhat lesser degree.

scholarly journals Changes in Census Data Will Affect Our Understanding of Infant Health

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110236
Author(s):  
Alexis R. Santos-Lozada
Keyword(s):  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Infant Health ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Health Statistics ◽  
Health Dynamics ◽  
The Impact

Descriptions of the effect of the implementation of a new disclosure avoidance system (DAS), which relies on differential privacy, emphasize the impact of our understanding of contemporary social and health dynamics. However, focusing on overall population may obscure important changes in subpopulation indicators such as age-specific rates resulting from this implementation. The author provides a visualization that compares infant mortality rates calculated using 2009–2011 county-level average death counts and denominators derived from the traditional and proposed DASs. Death counts come from the National Center for Health Statistics and denominators come from the first U.S. Census Bureau demonstration products. These visualizations indicate that infant mortality rates produced using the proposed DAS are different from those produced using the traditional methods, with higher variation observed for nonmetropolitan counties and areas with smaller populations. These findings suggest that the proposed DAS will hinder our ability to understand contemporary health dynamics in the United States.

scholarly journals Differential privacy in the 2020 US census: what will it do? Quantifying the accuracy/privacy tradeoff

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Petti ◽  
Abraham Flaxman
Keyword(s):  
Census Data ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Simple Random Sampling ◽  
Computer Code ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Decennial Census ◽  
Empirical Measure ◽  
Simple Random Sample ◽  
Us Census ◽  
Privacy Budget

Background: The 2020 US Census will use a novel approach to disclosure avoidance to protect respondents’ data, called TopDown. This TopDown algorithm was applied to the 2018 end-to-end (E2E) test of the decennial census. The computer code used for this test as well as accompanying exposition has recently been released publicly by the Census Bureau. Methods: We used the available code and data to better understand the error introduced by the E2E disclosure avoidance system when Census Bureau applied it to 1940 census data and we developed an empirical measure of privacy loss to compare the error and privacy of the new approach to that of a simple-random-sampling approach to protecting privacy. Results: We found that the empirical privacy loss of TopDown is substantially smaller than the theoretical guarantee for all privacy loss budgets we examined. When run on the 1940 census data, TopDown with a privacy budget of 1.0 was similar in error and privacy loss to that of a simple random sample of 50% of the US population. When run with a privacy budget of 4.0, it was similar in error and privacy loss of a 90% sample. Conclusions: This work fits into the beginning of a discussion on how to best balance privacy and accuracy in decennial census data collection, and there is a need for continued discussion.

scholarly journals Differential privacy in the 2020 US census: what will it do? Quantifying the accuracy/privacy tradeoff

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1722
Author(s):  
Samantha Petti ◽  
Abraham Flaxman
Keyword(s):  
Census Data ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Simple Random Sampling ◽  
Computer Code ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Decennial Census ◽  
Empirical Measure ◽  
Simple Random Sample ◽  
Us Census ◽  
Privacy Budget

Background: The 2020 US Census will use a novel approach to disclosure avoidance to protect respondents’ data, called TopDown. This TopDown algorithm was applied to the 2018 end-to-end (E2E) test of the decennial census. The computer code used for this test as well as accompanying exposition has recently been released publicly by the Census Bureau. Methods: We used the available code and data to better understand the error introduced by the E2E disclosure avoidance system when Census Bureau applied it to 1940 census data and we developed an empirical measure of privacy loss to compare the error and privacy of the new approach to that of a (non-differentially private) simple-random-sampling approach to protecting privacy. Results: We found that the empirical privacy loss of TopDown is substantially smaller than the theoretical guarantee for all privacy loss budgets we examined. When run on the 1940 census data, TopDown with a privacy budget of 1.0 was similar in error and privacy loss to that of a simple random sample of 50% of the US population. When run with a privacy budget of 4.0, it was similar in error and privacy loss of a 90% sample. Conclusions: This work fits into the beginning of a discussion on how to best balance privacy and accuracy in decennial census data collection, and there is a need for continued discussion.

scholarly journals Proposed U.S. Census Bureau Differential Privacy Method is Biased Against Rural and Non-white Populations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Mueller ◽  
Alexis R Santos-Lozada
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rates ◽  
Indian Population ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Rural Populations ◽  
White Population ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Aggregate Population ◽  
Hispanic White

The proposed changes to disclosure avoidance policies of the U.S. Census Bureau, grounded in differential privacy, have faced increasing criticism from demographers and other social scientists. Scholars have found that counts generated via Census-released test data are accurate for aggregate population statistics but introduce considerable error for tabulations of sub-groups. At present, the ramifications of this new approach, and the error it may introduce, remain unclear for rural populations. In this brief, we focus on rural populations and evaluate the ability of the proposed differential privacy data to estimate growth rates from 2000 to 2010 across the rural-urban continuum for the total, non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic or Latino/a, and non-Hispanic American Indian population. We find the method introduces significant error into growth rates at the county level for all groups except the total and non-Hispanic white population. Further, errors increase dramatically as we move from urban to rural. Thus, unless corrected the proposed differential privacy method will introduce significant rural and non-white bias into census tabulations.

scholarly journals The Solved Conflict: Pope Francis and Liberation Theology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
Global Church

AbstractThe battle for meaning and influence between Latin American liberations theologians and the Vatican was one of the most significant conflicts in the global Catholic church of the twentieth century. With the election of the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the global church in 2013, the question about the legacy of liberation theology was actualized. The canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the pope’s approximation to the public figure of Gustavo Gutiérrez signaled a new approach to the liberation theology movement in the Vatican. This article argues that Pope Francis shares some of the main theological concerns as pontiff with liberation theology. Although the pope remains an outsider to liberation theology, he has in a sense solved the conflict between the Vatican and the Latin American social movement. Through an analysis of ecclesial documents and theological literature, his can be discerned on three levels. First, Pope Francis’ use of certain theological ideas from liberation theology has been made possible and less controversial by post-cold war contexts. Second, Pope Francis has contributed to the solution of this conflict through significant symbolic gestures rather than through a shift of official positions. Third, as Pope Francis, the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio has appropriated certain elements that are specific to liberation theology without acknowledging his intellectual debt to it.

scholarly journals Trends in breastfeeding practices and mothers’ experience in the French NutriNet-Santé cohort

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Courtois ◽  
Sandrine Péneau ◽  
Benoît Salanave ◽  
Valentina A. Andreeva ◽  
Marie Françoise Roland-Cachera ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Breastfeeding Duration ◽  
Breastfeeding Initiation ◽  
Breastfeeding Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Breastfeeding Practices ◽  
Breastfeeding Education ◽  
Breastfeeding Cessation

Abstract Background France has one of the lowest rates in the world regarding breastfeeding initiation and duration. Few studies have explored breastfeeding practices in France since the middle of the twentieth century, or following from initiation to cessation. The purpose of our study was to determine trends in breastfeeding over the past decades regarding public health recommendations, and to examine mothers’ perceptions about factors known to have an impact on breastfeeding support and cessation. Methods From the NutriNet-Santé cohort, 29,953 parous women (launched in 2009 to study relation between nutrition and health), were included in the present study. Using web-questionnaires, they were asked retrospectively if they had breastfed their youngest child or not, and if so, the duration of exclusive and total breastfeeding. For those who had breastfed, we investigated their perceptions about support at initiation and during the entire breastfeeding period and reasons for breastfeeding cessation. We also asked those who did not breastfeed about their perceptions and reasons for infant formula feeding their youngest child. Analyses were weighted according to the French census data. Results In the NutriNet-Santé cohort, 67.3% of mothers breastfed their youngest child. The proportion of breastfed children increased over the past few decades, from 55.0% (95% CI 54.3, 55.6) in the 1970s to 82.9% (82.4, 83.4) in the 2010s. Total and exclusive breastfeeding duration went from 3.3 months and 2.4 months respectively in the 1970s to 5.9 months and 3.2 months respectively in the 2010s. Most mothers felt supported at initiation and during the breastfeeding period. A reported desire to have breastfed longer than two months was 59.5%. Mothers who did not breastfeed did it by choice (64.3%). They did not feel guilty (78.2%) and did not perceive a problem not to breastfeed (58.8%), but almost half of them would have liked to have breastfed (45.9%). Conclusion Breastfeeding duration has increased in the past decades but did not reach the public health recommendations threshold. Targets other than mothers have to be considered for breastfeeding education, like the partner and her environment, to increase breastfeeding practices. Trial registration The study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03335644).

People's security — today's challenges of a new approach to policing: Working experience of the Community Security Initiative (CSI) project in Kyrgyzstan 2011

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Mueller ◽  
Axel Ostlund
Keyword(s):  
Neutral Position ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Political Will ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Local Staff ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communication Interaction ◽  
Interethnic Conflict ◽  
Police Ethics ◽  
Special Project

AbstractFor several years the OSCE has attempted to lobby and forge the political will to develop police reform in Kyrgyzstan. In June 2010 its police did not have the capacity to anticipate and prevent destabilisation and to maintain a neutral position in the management of the interethnic conflict. The fact that ethnic minorities are significantly underrepresented in the police contributed to this. As a result, the population's trust further deteriorated from an already existing critically low level. The then incumbent Transitional Government understood the need to support the police in restoring trust and confidence and hence requested the OSCE's assistance. A special project called the Community Security Initiative was created and a team of 28 international police advisors, supported by 21 local staff, deployed in January 2011 in twelve sensitive police stations including Osh. Using a new approach to communication/interaction these advisors try to change the perception of both the police and the population when addressing and resolving daily security problems in the communities. This requires a new and inventive approach putting peoples' security in the forefront. The main objective of CSI is to support the Kyrgyz Government in three main areas: improving relations between the police and the public, supporting and advising the MOI in respecting police ethics standards including human rights, and providing support and advice in the area of multiethnic policing.

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