Understanding the Quality of Alternative Citizenship Data Sources for the 2020 Census
August 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-38R
Abstract
This paper examines the quality of citizenship data in self-reported survey responses compared to administrative records and evaluates options for constructing an accurate count of resident U.S. citizens. Person-level discrepancies between survey-collected citizenship data and administrative records are more pervasive than previously reported in studies comparing survey and administrative data aggregates. Our results imply that survey-sourced citizenship data produce significantly lower estimates of the noncitizen share of the population than would be produced from currently available administrative records; both the survey-sourced and administrative data have shortcomings that could contribute to this difference. Our evidence is consistent with noncitizen respondents misreporting their own citizenship status and failing to report that of other household members. At the same time, currently available administrative records may miss some naturalizations and capture others with a delay. The evidence in this paper also suggests that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census would lead to lower self-response rates in households potentially containing noncitizens, resulting in higher fieldwork costs and a lower-quality population count.
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census data,
respondent,
survey,
hispanic,
ethnicity,
immigrant,
disadvantaged,
population,
household,
immigration,
citizen,
survey census,
resident,
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census survey,
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Ordinary Least Squares,
Office of Management and Budget,
County Business Patterns,
Current Population Survey,
Department of Justice,
1990 Census,
Survey of Income and Program Participation,
Social Security,
American Community Survey,
Social Security Number,
Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research,
Protected Identification Key,
American Housing Survey,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
2020 Census,
Disclosure Review Board,
Customs and Border Protection,
Linear Probability Model,
Person Validation System,
Census Numident,
Person Identification Validation System,
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Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers,
SSA Numident,
Administrative Records,
National Opinion Research Center,
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