US Census Bureau Counts on SAS®

It seems hard to believe that only 10 years ago results from the US Census were analyzed and reviewed mostly on paper. How fitting, then, that results of the first census of the new millennium are being processed using the most advanced online analytical software available.

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Richard W. Swartz
Associate Director, Information Technology, Census Bureau

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Bob Bateman
Assistant Division Chief, Information Systems, Census Bureau

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The 2000 decennial US Census incorporated the powerful online analytical capabilities of SAS, giving the US Census Bureau unprecedented access to microdata and summary information from its count of America's more than 280 million inhabitants. For the first time in the bureau's history, analysts can access all data from their desktops with point-and-click ease – collecting and analyzing in a matter of seconds information that could have taken days to gather and process.

Gone are the mainframes and minicomputers of the 1990 count, when analysts had limited access to the information they needed. With most of the data-review products on paper, thorough reviews were difficult because of time and resource limitations.

"That was a much slower process than what we now have online and available interactively," says Rick Denby, Assistant Chief in the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division of the US Census Bureau.

This time around, Census Bureau employees and their sworn census agents from partnering states enjoy access to more than 1 billion records stored online in a client-server environment. Using SAS, the Census Bureau has increased the number of records available and enhanced drill-down capabilities for the kind of depth that lets analysts compare 2000 census data for a specific city block with the 1990 data for the same block.

That's done by using SAS to create person-level and household-level files for each state and merging the records to look at components of a household with its occupants. By merging that data with geographical information, analysts have the ability to drill by geographical hierarchy. Access to such data will give states that are gaining congressional districts the population-shift and other demographic information their legislators will need to draw new lines.

Unparalleled access to so much information also will help ensure the appropriate investment of about $200 billion in federal funds with distribution formulas tied to census data, Denby says. But to the Census Bureau employees who once waited days on end for answers to their queries, time savings is the greatest return.

"You can run a query in a state the size of Wyoming, which has only about half a million people, in no time," Denby explains. "In a state as large as California, with over 30 million people, the longest query may take only a few minutes."

Another SAS strength is its ability to handle multiple users working on the same tools. Between October and December 2000, even as the Census Bureau was tabulating the short forms that most citizens and residents completed and returned, sworn census agents from partnering states were reviewing files, too. On average, 75 people were using the same SAS software – all at the same time. Census employees logged 13,900 person-hours of review over 11 weeks, with each file receiving 55 hours of review.

"I can assure you that's vastly greater than in 1990," Denby says.

The bureau also used SAS to develop a multidimensional, benchmark database application used as a quality check. With that, the bureau took data from the 1990 census and merged it with the 2000 data as well as with some independent data. That allowed analysts to see large and small geographic areas that had substantial increases or declines in population or housing units.

"It provided a quick, easy way for analysts to concentrate on the areas with the most change," Denby says. "I'm not sure that our review could have been as strong without something like SAS."

The 2000 census was no mere headcount of the US population. It was an adventure in national self-awareness, a revealing personal inventory of who we are collectively and where we're headed culturally. For the first time in Census Bureau history, data is available with the click of a mouse, forever revolutionizing the way the nation accesses and interprets the hundreds of millions of answers to all those census questions. We'll continue learning the results in the years to come, thanks to hard work at the Census Bureau and the release of SAS®9 – just in time to help process the 53-question "long forms" that about one in six US households received.

"We feel that's going to make us much more efficient," Denby says. "Our programmers will save a tremendous amount of time, and it's going to dramatically improve our response."

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