Building the Case for Public Statistics, March 8 in DC

Building the Case for Public Statistics: Workshop for Stakeholders   March 8, 2018 Academy Health, 1666 K St NW #1100, Washington, DC 20006 Register: Online or PDF  |  Preliminary Agenda In uncertain times, we need evidence. Federal statistics are vital sources. Researchers, businesses, governments, and nonprofits rely on this data, and we need to do a better job of telling policymakers that investment in data is important. APDU is pleased to announce a training that will give stakeholders in federal statistics the tools they need to educate policymakers on the value of their data. How can you better understand: the messages that resonate best with policymakers about the value of Federal data? the most effective way to engage with policymakers to make the case for statistical data? the needs of a broader community of federal data users and supporters? Meet the Trainers Mary Jo Hoeksema, Director of Government Affairs for the Population Association of America and Association of Population Centers, and Co-Director of The Census Project Mary Jo Hoeksema advocates for funding federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, Census Bureau, and National Center for Health Statistics. Since 2008, she has also been Co-Director of The Census Project, a diverse collaborative of national, state, and local organizations, including APDU, which support the decennial census and American Community Survey. Emily J. Holubowich, Senior Vice President, CRD Associates Emily J. Holubowich has 15 years of experience in health and fiscal policy, government relations, strategic communications, and coalition management. Ms. Holubowich has an extensive body of written work and more recently has authored and managed the production of the reports for advocacy campaigns and is frequently sought out by the media for her expertise on public health and fiscal policy. Dale Oak, President, Oak Federal Solutions, LLC Dale Oak has more than 30 years of experience on federal budget and appropriations matters in government and the private sector. Decades of senior staff experience help Mr. Oak translate budget and appropriations developments, facts and figures into actionable information.

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The Association of Public Data Users (APDU) is a national membership network that links users, producers, and disseminators of government statistical data. APDU is managed by the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC).

Cutting Spending on Statistics Won’t Save the Budget

From PacificStandard:

Last week, the Trump administration announced it would seek dramatic spending cuts across a number of agencies in order to pay for a $54 billion increase in defense spending. That will be tough to accomplish: The bulk of the federal government’s budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending, all of which the president has vowed to leave untouched. The administration has specifically said it would target the Environmental Protection Agency and “foreign aid,” both of which constitute a very small proportion of the federal budget. But elsewhere in Washington, D.C., researchers are worried that another category of government spending is also vulnerable: spending on statistics and data.

Donald Trump’s hostility toward official economic data is especially well-known. His casual comments about the official unemployment rate being “phony” have pained economists for months, and researchers have worried that the administration might seek to either stop collecting necessary data altogether, or might direct agencies to skew data in a manner that supports certain policies or claims. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration was already floating the idea of changing the way the government calculates trade deficits, with a revised methodology that would make trade gaps look bigger—a change that would presumably bolster support for Trump’s assertion that the country’s trade policies and agreements need to be renegotiated or changed.

2017 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures

From the Alzheimer's Association:

Here are several critical statistics you'll find in Alzheimer's Association Facts and Figures:

Between 2000 and 2014, there was an 89 percent increase in deaths due to Alzheimer's. Deaths from Alzheimer's, the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, nearly doubled during this period, while those from heart disease have declined.

More than 15 million Americans provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer's or other dementias. In 2016, these caregivers provided an estimated 18.2 billion hours of care valued at over $230 billion.

2017 marks the first time total payments for caring for individuals with Alzheimer's or other dementias will surpass a quarter of a trillion dollars.

The information in this report is heartbreaking, but it's also a call to action for all who share our vision of a world without Alzheimer's disease.

IRS Data Book

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Data Book is published annually by the IRS and contains statistical tables and organizational information on a fiscal year basis. The report provides data on collecting the revenue, issuing refunds, enforcing the law, assisting the taxpayer, and the budget and workforce.

With a new online format, this year’s publication makes navigating data on taxpayer assistance, enforcement, and IRS operations easier, with graphic depictions of key areas and quick links to the underlying data. You can view selected summary graphs, key statistics, and descriptions of the tables and the IRS functions they cover.

World Statistics Day 2015: October 20

The U.S. Census Bureau will join statistical organizations throughout the world to celebrate the second World Statistics Day on Oct. 20, 2015.

This interactive infographic is a compilation of news graphics that highlights the wide range of ways the Census Bureau supports this year’s theme of “Better data. Better lives.”

The Census Bureau uses statistics to provide critical and timely information about the people, places and economy of the United States.

For more information on World Statistics Day 2015, please see the links provided below.

  Infographic: World Statistics Day 2015

  Facts for Features: *Special Edition* World Statistics Day: Oct. 20, 2015 | PDF Version

  Video: Statistics All Around Us

  Official United Nations World Statistics Day 2015 Website

The Census Bureau will also release several new blog posts and an additional video in honor of World Statistics Day on Oct. 20.

What We Don’t Know About Canada Might Hurt Us

When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced plans in 2010 to make the government’s primary source of household data into a voluntary survey, researchers across Canada warned of dire consequences for the survey’s reliability. Those predictions have largely come true: In 2006, nearly 94 percent of Canadian households that received the survey responded to it. In 2011, the response rate fell below 70 percent. As a result, Statistics Canada, the country’s statistical agency, decided not to release detailed data on Snow Lake, Manitoba and more than 1,000 other communities, and researchers have called into question the validity of the data on other areas that was released.

Canada’s experience with a voluntary household survey is now drawing attention in the United States. Republican lawmakers led by Texas Congressman Ted Poe are pushing to make a similar change to the American Community Survey — a similar, annual questionnaire that aims to measure national trends in dozens of areas such as education, housing, fertility and employment by surveying more than 3 million Americans each year. Both Poe and his Canadian counterparts consider the surveys an invasion of privacy, but researchers on both sides of the border say the Canadian experiment is a harsh lesson in what can happen when a country loses its commitment to collecting accurate information about its residents.

More from fivethirtyeight.com

World Statistics Pocketbook 2014 edition

The World Statistics Pocketbook is an annual compilation of key economic, social and environmental indicators, presented in one-page profiles. This edition includes country profiles for 217 countries or areas of the world....

This issue of the World Statistics Pocketbook covers various years from 2005 to 2014. For the economic indicators, in general, three years - 2005, 2010 and 2012 - are shown, unless otherwise indicated. Due to space limitations, data for one year only are shown for the indicators in the social and environmental categories. For the six social indicators for which the range of years 2010-2015 is shown, the data refer to projections. When other ranges of years are shown, the data refer to the most recent year available within that range.

Direct link to document

TradeStats Express: free state and US export data

Get the latest annual and quarterly trade data with TradeStats Express™ from the Census Bureau. Retrieve, visualize, analyze, print and download your customized output.

Includes:

Global Patterns of U.S. Merchandise Trade (example: U.S. Chemical Exports and Imports for All Countries)
Product Profiles of U.S. Merchandise Trade with a Selected Market (example: All Products Traded Between the United States and United Kingdom)

Global Patterns of a State's Exports (example: Exports from Texas to each country)
State-by-State Exports to a Selected Market (example: Exports to Ireland from each state)
Export Product Profile to a Selected Market (example: Products from Texas to Iceland)

Nonprofits statistics

From National Center for Charitable Statistics:

Nonprofit organizations include everything from neighborhood associations that meet a couple of times a year and have no assets to Harvard University and the Gates Foundation, each with tens of billions in assets. They include soup kitchens and traditional "charities" that serve the poor as well as your local church, the Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club, the United Steel Workers labor union, and the Metropolitan Opera. As you can see, there's no "one-size-fits-all" way to think about nonprofit organizations.
So we categorize. Nonprofit organizations can be divided by the subsection of the United States Internal Revenue Code 501(c) under which they fall.

Visit the Table Wizard reporting tool, which will allow you to filter statistics by STATE and COUNTY.

Dancing statistics: explaining the statistical concept of correlation through dance

A four minute film demonstrating the statistical concept of correlation through dance.

Project title: 'Communicating Psychology to the Public through Dance' (AKA 'Dancing Statistics')

Founder & Co-Producer: Lucy Irving
Project Manager & Co-Producer: Elise Phillips
Statistical Lead & Co-Producer: Professor Andy Field
Choreographer: Masha Gurina
Filmmaker: Kyle Stevenson

These films were funded by a BPS Public Engagement with additional funding from IdeasTap.

New York State Statistical Yearbook

The New York State Statistical Yearbook is published annually by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in cooperation with the Office of the Governor and the New York State Division of the Budget. Similar to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the Yearbook is organized into chapters focusing on specific governmental functions or subjects, such as Education, Transportation, and Finances.

At the beginning of each of these 15 sections, “Highlight” information is provided along with a listing of tables in that section. For most of the tables, data are presented for the five boroughs of New York City and the 57 counties outside New York City. The Yearbook has been available online since 2002.

Stats INDIANA: data not limited to the Hoosier State

STATS Indiana is the official digital data center for the State of Indiana. It provides easy access to critical statistics for states, counties, cities and towns, townships, regions, census tracts and more.

Most useful is the Find By Value tool. For basic peer finding, users should use the linked rank lists included in the profile. These lists give immediate peers within a state, or for all states, for most data in the USA Counties in Profile. Just click on the hyper linked rank number next to the desired item.

How the Feds Blind Us To Our Malaise

Though we seldom think of them this way, America's statistical agencies are the very eyes and ears of our democracy. When they are functioning properly, they provide essential information to help the public and its elected representatives see what is going right in our country-and what is going wrong. Such information is crucial for forming a more perfect union.

Without timely and accurate information on our domestic problems, our government cannot hope to address these swiftly, much less effectively. Whether you are a progressive or a conservative, in favor of more government or less of it, you need good data to inform your own efforts to make our country better.

America was the first government in the modern era to recognize the importance of evidence-based public policy. Our Constitution mandated a decennial census-a truly revolutionary notion back in the late eighteenth century. And for most of our history, the U.S. statistical system has been well ahead of the curve, if not a virtual wonder of the world.

No longer. Today our government statistical services are failing at some vital missions-and they have generally been falling away from the global forefront for at least a generation. In key fields we see not only stagnation, but even retrogression. The painful truth is that our statistical services are currently incapable of providing some of the basic facts and figures we need for confronting our most pressing domestic social troubles.

More from HERE.

Fun with statistics! from the Census Bureau

I watched these fun Statistics in Schools videos. One addresses "how a picture can help you answer the three basic questions of statistical analysis: 'how big is it?', 'what difference does it make?', and 'are you sure that's just not dumb luck?'"

The National Center for Charitable Statistics

Nonprofit data "at your fingertips."

The NCCS "mission is to develop and disseminate high quality data on nonprofit organizations and their activities for use in research on the relationships between the nonprofit sector, government, the commercial sector, and the broader civil society."

GET DATA HERE.

New Census App Helps Users Find Local Statistics on the Go

The U.S. Census Bureau this week released dwellr, a new mobile app that delivers on-the-go access to key demographic, socio-economic and housing statistics for thousands of places across the nation.
Powered by American Community Survey statistics, dwellr can pull up a list of U.S. locations that matches users’ preferences for such variables as city size, geographic region, job type and income. Users can also learn more about where they are by a simple tap of the screen that reveals educational levels, housing values and commute times.
“With dwellr, people considering a move, homebuyers, travelers and military families can easily access and explore information on U.S. towns and cities based on data compiled through the American Community Survey,” Census Bureau Director John Thompson said. “With dwellr and our previously released America’s Economy app, the Census Bureau is using 21st century technology to accomplish our centuries-old mission to measure America and make the results accessible to the public anytime, anywhere on any device.”
The customizable demographic and community variables featured in dwellr include:
• • city size
• • commute type
• • housing value
• • income
• •
• • educational attainment and
• • demographic variables including age, race, marital status and family type
The mobile app is now available for download through the Apple app store and Google Play store for Apple iPhones and iPads and Android phones and 10-inch tablets. Privacy protection is built into the app, and all information is stored only on the user’s device.

Personal Income Tax: Analysis of 2010 Personal Income Tax Returns

This report describes the prominent features of New York's personal income tax, with particular emphasis on the 2010 tax year. It also includes taxpayer profiles consisting of number of taxable returns, sources of income, federal adjustments, New York modifications, deductions, dependent exemptions, tax liability and credits by NYAGI class, filing status and return type. In addition, it includes separate sections on income, itemized deduction amounts, exemptions, available credits and information on refundable credits. Finally, it compares statistics for 2010 with those from the prior year for most of these items.

Accompanying this report are statistical tables that cover resident, part-year resident, and nonresident returns. The report also includes a description and statistical information from returns filed by fiduciaries of estates and trusts.

National Transportation Atlas Databases 2013

The National Transportation Atlas Databases 2013 (NTAD2013) is a set of nationwide geographic databases of transportation facilities, transportation networks, and associated infrastructure. These datasets include spatial information for transportation modal networks and intermodal terminals, as well as the related attribute informa- tion for these features. Metadata documentation, as prescribed by the International Organization of Standards, is also provided for each database. The data support research, analysis, and decision-making across all modes of transportation. They are most useful at the national level, but have major applications at regional, State, and local scales throughout the transportation community.

Capital Punishment, 2011 – Statistical Tables

At yearend 2011, 35 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons held 3,082 inmates under sentence of death, which was 57 fewer than at yearend 2010 (figure 1). This represents the eleventh consecutive year in which the number of inmates
under sentence of death decreased.

Four states (California, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania) held more than half of all inmates on death row on December 31, 2011. The Federal Bureau of Prisons held 56 inmates under sentence of death at yearend.

Of prisoners under sentence of death at yearend, 55% were white and 42% were black. The 387 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death accounted for 14% of inmates with a known ethnicity. Ninety-eight percent of inmates under sentence of death were male, and 2% were female. The race and sex of inmates under sentence of death has remained relatively unchanged since 2000.

More from Bureau of Justice Statistics.

World Statistics Pocketbook 2013 Edition

From the United Nations

The World Statistics Pocketbook is an annual compilation of key economic, social and environmental indicators, presented in one-page profiles. This edition includes country profiles for 216 countries or areas of the world. Prepared by the United Nations Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, it responds to General Assembly resolution 2626 (XXV), in which the Secretary-General is requested to supply basic national data that will increase international public awareness of countries' development efforts.

The indicators shown are selected from the wealth of international statistical information compiled regularly by the Statistics Division and the Population Division of the United Nations, the statistical services of the United Nations specialized agencies and other international organizations and institutions.