Online Program

The Effect of the Differential Privacy Disclosure Avoidance System Proposed by the Census Bureau on 2020 Census Products: Four Case Studies of Census Blocks in Alaska. (309803)

Presentation

Thomas Bryan, BGD 
Richard Sewell, Alaska Dept. of Transportation & Public Facilities 
*David A. Swanson, UC Riverside and CSDE, U of Washington 

Keywords: children, voting age population, adults, errors

The Census Bureau plans to introduce a new Disclosure Avoidance System known as Differential Privacy (DP) for its 2020 census data products. Using a DP demonstration product file provided by the Census Bureau, we assess the errors introduced by DP on census block data in Alaska in the form of four case studies and find them to be substantial by type and level. Because it is likely that the results we found in Alaska will be found in other states, our examination leads us to conclude that it is likely that the errors introduced by DP of the type and at the level found in the demonstration product file we examined will render the nation’s block level data essentially unusable.