The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
For the past couple of years, DC, in its actual-city rather than nation's-capital guise, has been afflicted by a bit of a mystery. Everywhere you go there's all these big new buildings going up, but official statistics don't show the city's population increasing. What's happening? New figured indicate the answer: The official statistics were wrong.
It seems a bit odd to be that the Census would have these kinds of problems.
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The Census Bureau's budget has been squeezed by the Bush administration, so the cross-checks to identify such local changes are now eliminated or delayed. Nevertheless, it is strange. You'd think a business-oriented government would want to have accurate data about where and who the customers are.
July 22, 2006 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Aren't these wide-eyed newspaper reports simply precious?
Now, let me see. The old algorithm was wrong?
No, it was okay, but we didn't plug the correct figures in.
Why not?
'Cause we didn't have them?
(Pause)
Actually; we threw out the old algorithm, entirely.
Really? What did you replace it with?
Oh; two tickets for the boss and his wife to attend a Nats game -- courtesy of the mayor.
July 22, 2006 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It seems a bit odd to be that the Census would have these kinds of problems."
It very difficult to properly count the crab people.
July 22, 2006 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Census only happens every 10 years. In between, population counts are only estimates, based on demography and income tax filings.
July 24, 2006 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Robert: How would Bush cutting the Census budget cause the issue Matt is referring to. The last census happened in 2000, unless you mean the first Bush?
Also, not sure why Matt is surprised. People move around a lot and are very hard to count.
July 25, 2006 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ragout and dcpi,
You're mistaken. The Census Bureau conducts many surveys every month (for example, the Current Population Survey and the Housing Survey), which are used to provide very accurate data in the years between comprehensive decennial censuses. Bush the Younger cut budgets for collecting and analyzing such data, and that's why there was such an undercount for DC. You'll note that the article Matt refers to mentions the "2005 census estimate." Instead of providing accurate figures annually, as was the case in earlier administrations, Bush's underfunded Census Bureau took several years to get these figures right.
August 7, 2006 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink