Planned
Subjects for the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey
Written by:
John H. Thompson
Yesterday, the U.S. Census Bureau hit a major
milestone and delivered the planned
subjects for the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey (ACS) to
Congress as required by law. Since releasing this information, there have been
a number of questions raised about the inclusion of sexual orientation and
gender identity due to an error in the appendix of the report. Our proposal to
Congress was that the planned subjects remain unchanged from the 2010 Census and
will cover gender, age, race/ethnicity, relationship and homeownership status. It
did not include sexual orientation or gender identity.
I would like to walk through the multiyear process
the Census Bureau followed to get us to this milestone. Deciding these subjects
is a rigorous, iterative process completed in conjunction with the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) and coordinated across many federal agencies. In
order for a subject to be included, there must be a clear statutory or
regulatory need for data collection.
In preparation for the 2020 Census, we conducted a
detailed review of decennial census and ACS content, ensuring the data are
appropriate to meet a wide range of federal needs — from providing
apportionment and redistricting data as part of our representative democracy,
to helping distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds annually. In
2014, the Census Bureau began facilitating this review in coordination with the
Offices of General Counsel at the Department of Commerce and other agencies,
who reviewed each subject to determine if it had a statutory or regulatory
mandate. The Census Bureau published the results in a Federal
Register Notice in May 2015, with an opportunity for public comment and
agency feedback.
In April 2016, more than 75 members of Congress
wrote to the Census Bureau to request the addition of sexual orientation and
gender identity as a subject for the American Community Survey. We carefully
considered this thoughtful request and again worked with federal agencies and
the OMB Interagency Working Group on Measuring Sexual Orientation and Gender
Identity to determine if there was a legislative mandate to collect this data. Our
review concluded there was no federal data need to change the planned census
and ACS subjects.
My hope is that the process I have outlined here
sheds some light and transparency on the robust process we followed. See the
2020 Census Decision Memorandum “Submission
of Subjects Planned for the 2020 Census and ACS” for more detailed
background on the decision process.
In 2020, our goal is to conduct a complete and
accurate census. The Census Bureau remains committed to reflecting the
information needs of our changing society. We will continue to examine the
effectiveness of decennial census and ACS questions to collect accurate data on
America’s people, places and economy.
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