Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics File

Abowd et al. (2022) describe the concepts and methods used by the Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) to produce formally private output in support of the 2020 Census statistical data product releases, with a particular focus on the DAS implementation that was used to create the 2020 Census Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File. In this paper we describe the updates to the DAS that were required to release the Demographic and Housing Characteristics (DHC) File, which provides more granular tables than other statistical data products, such as the Redistricting Data Summary File. We also describe the final configuration parameters used for the 2020 production DHC DAS implementation, error metrics for these production statistical data products, and plans for future experimental data products that provide confidence intervals for confidential 2020 Census tabulations.

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Publication Details

Journal
Harvard Data Science Review
Published
2025-05-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.f1065159
Primary Topic
Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
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article
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article

Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics File

Daniel Kifer, Robert Ashmead, Pavel I. Zhuravlev, Philip Leclerc et al.
Harvard Data Science Review
Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
article

Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics File

Daniel Kifer, Robert Ashmead, Pavel I. Zhuravlev, Philip Leclerc, Ryan Cumings-Menon, John M. Abowd, Matthew Spence
article en

Abstract

Abowd et al. (2022) describe the concepts and methods used by the Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) to produce formally private output in support of the 2020 Census statistical data product releases, with a particular focus on the DAS implementation that was used to create the 2020 Census Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File. In this paper we describe the updates to the DAS that were required to release the Demographic and Housing Characteristics (DHC) File, which provides more granular tables than other statistical data products, such as the Redistricting Data Summary File. We also describe the final configuration parameters used for the 2020 production DHC DAS implementation, error metrics for these production statistical data products, and plans for future experimental data products that provide confidence intervals for confidential 2020 Census tabulations.

Harvard Data Science ReviewVol. 7(3)
Pennsylvania State University (US), United States Census Bureau (US), Cornell University (US), University of Chicago (US), National Opinion Research Center (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 87%
Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
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Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics File — Daniel Kifer, Robert Ashmead, et al. · Harvard Data Science Review (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS