How do you count a nation of more than 250 million peopleâ€"many of whom are on the move and some of whom may not want to be counted? How can you obtain accurate population information for apportioning the House of Representatives, allocating government resources, and characterizing who we are and how we live? This book attempts to answer these questions by reviewing the recent census operations and ongoing research and by offering detailed proposals for ways to improve the census.

Online version of a report issued in 1994 on the study undertaken by the Panel To Evaluate Alternative Census Methods of the National Research Council in response to the Decennial Census Improvement Act of 1991. Among the issues considered are alternative enumeration methods, sampling and statistical estimation, uses of administrative records in censuses, and methods for hard-to-enumerate populations and non-response follow-up.

One of Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Books of 2000 For those interested in understanding the historical and scientific context of the census adjustment controversy, Who Counts? is absolutely essential reading. —Science Ever since the founding fathers authorized a national headcount as the means of apportioning seats in the federal legislature, the decennial census has been a political battleground. Political power, and more recently the allocation of federal resources, depend directly upon who is counted and who is left out. Who Counts? is the story of the lawsuits, congressional hearings, and bureaucratic intrigues surrounding the 1990 census. These controversies formed largely around a single vexing question: should the method of conducting the census be modified in order to rectify the demonstrated undercount of poor urban minorities? But they also stemmed from a more general debate about the methods required to count an ever more diverse and mobile population of over two hundred million. The responses to these questions repeatedly pitted the innovations of statisticians and demographers against objections that their attempts to alter traditional methods may be flawed and even unconstitutional. Who Counts? offers a detailed review of the preparation, implementation, and aftermath of the last three censuses. It recounts the growing criticisms of innaccuracy and undercounting, and the work to develop new enumeration strategies. The party shifts that followed national elections played an increasingly important role in the politization of the census, as the Department of Commerce asserted growing authority over the scientific endeavors of the Census Bureau. At the same time, each decade saw more city and state governments and private groups bringing suit to challenge census methodology and results. Who Counts? tracks the legal course that began in 1988, when a coalition led by New York City first sued to institute new statistical procedures in response to an alleged undercount of urban inhabitants. The challenge of accurately classifying an increasingly mixed population further threatens the legitimacy of the census, and Who Counts? investigates the difficulties of gaining unambiguous measurements of race and ethnicity, and the proposal that the race question be eliminated in favor of ethnic origin. Who Counts? concludes with a discussion of the proposed census design for 2000, as well as the implications of population counts on the composition and size of Congress. This volume reveals in extraordinary detail the interplay of law, politics, and science that propel the ongoing census debate, a debate whose outcome will have a tremendous impact on the distribution of political power and economic resources among the nation's communities. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series

In provocative terms that push the envelope of technical, administrative, and legal capabilities, Swanson and Walashek propose a re-vamped US census based neither on the current system, self-enumeration, nor its predecessor, door-to-door canvassing. Instead, they propose that it be built on a combination of four elements: (1) administrative records; (2) the continuously updated Master Address File; (3) survey data; and (4) modeling and imputation techniques. They use “Census-Enhanced Master Address File (CEMAF) as a descriptive term for their proposal, which is based on four principles and includes a proposal for an independent Census Bureau. They argue that evidence suggests that the methods used to conduct traditional census counts may be at the end of their useful working lives, as evidenced by increasing costs and declining response rates. Some of their ideas will seem farfetched. However, Swanson and Walashek believe this is the time to discuss radical proposals as governments re-examine the utility of traditional census counts and consider reductions, as is the case in Canada and England. This SpringerBriefs should be on the reading list of staff in statistical agencies grappling with rising costs and declining response rates, as well as census stakeholders concerned about costs, accuracy, and census utility.

This book presents educators with research-based strategies to promote civic education in their classrooms. Going beyond theory and measures of achievement, these methods focus on information location, evaluation and activation, dialogue in the classroom, understandings of discourse in popular culture and policymaking, and understanding the role of STEM disciplines in democracy. The author also furthers considerations of how the political process can provide meaning and new visions of justice in a globalized world, and advance student leadership and academic writing in the information age. As the world faces unprecedented levels of poverty, wealth disparity, environmental destruction, and ethical questions regarding biotechnology, the United States needs knowledgeable citizens to effectively deal with these issues. Letizia provides teachers and teacher educators with the needed methods to foster these types of democratic considerations.