Mr. Salvo spoke about a public report called “The Newest New Yorkers: Characteristics of the City’s Foreign-born Population” produced by the NYC Department of City Planning (and actually co-written by Mr. Salvo himself). Mr. Salvo explained that the purpose of the report is to provide information about immigration patterns to non-profit organizations to optimize their efforts. Before the talk I didn’t realize that census data was more than just counting the population to determine the amount of representatives for each state. According to Freakonomics, economists, sociologists, political scientists use census data for diverse purposes. These researchers are granted access to a much more detailed sample of the census data. However, the Census Bureau slightly distorts data entries so that no individual can be identified but that demographical generalizations can still be made. However, due to programming errors, this effort rendered erroneous information concerning certain demographic groups (especially people over the age of 65). These inconsistencies are very concerning when considering that census data is not only vital to the structure of our constitutional republic, but also to policy makers, researchers, and non-profit strategists.

 

Read more at http://freakonomics.com/2010/02/02/can-you-trust-census-data/