#  Chris Kenny (APRW) 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **September 12, 2023** 

 12:00PM - 02:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **CGIS Knafel, room K354 or Online via Zoom**  



 

 



 

##  Speaker

 Chris Kenny, "Evaluating Bias and Noise Induced by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Privacy Protection Methods"

##  Abstract

 The United States Census Bureau faces a difficult trade-off between the accuracy of Census statistics and the protection of individual information. We conduct the first independent evaluation of bias and noise induced by the Bureau’s two main disclosure avoidance systems: the TopDown algorithm employed for the 2020 Census and the swapping algorithm implemented for the 1990, 2000, and 2010 Censuses. Our evaluation leverages the recent release of the Noisy Measure File (NMF) as well as the availability of two independent runs of the TopDown algorithm applied to the 2010 decennial Census. We find that the NMF contains too much noise to be directly useful alone, especially for Hispanic and multiracial populations. TopDown’s post-processing dramatically reduces the NMF noise and produces similarly accurate data to swapping in terms of bias and noise. These patterns hold across census geographies with varying population sizes and racial diversity. While the estimated errors for both TopDown and swapping are generally no larger than other sources of Census error, they can be relatively substantial for geographies with small total populations.

 *The American Politics Research Workshop (Gov 3004) presents an opportunity for graduate students and Harvard faculty to present and receive feedback on their current research. The workshop highlights key theoretical and empirical findings from Harvard affiliates on topics related to American politics. All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.*



 

 



 

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