Privacy, accuracy, and the looming 2020 census

Ten seconds pass as Joe Salvo considers how New York City, his longtime home, could prepare an emergency response strategy to a hurricane – without using census data.

He draws a blank.

“Where do you go first? Where you send resources that are by definition limited?” says the head of the population division at the city’s planning department. “We would try to come up with something to figure out where the resources should go, but it would always involve census data. There’s no other source like this.”

But soon that source might be less useful than it once was. Demographers, social scientists, and other data users like Mr. Salvo are concerned that their ability to draw upon 2020 census data for city planning and other routine purposes could be affected by a Census Bureau decision to adopt a more rigorous system to ensure and

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