Adjusting the 1980 census of population and housing

"In 1980, several cities and states sued the U.S. Census Bureau to correct census results. This correction would adjust for the differential undercounting of Blacks and Hispanics, especially in cities. In this article, the authors, each of whom testified for New York City and State in their joint lawsuit against the Census Bureau, describe the likely pattern of the undercount and present a method to adjust for it." The authors describe available methods for data adjustment and introduce a regression-based composite method of adjustment, which is used to estimate the undercounts for 66 areas. "As expected, we find that the highest undercount rates are in large cities, and the lowest are in states and state remainders with small percentages of Blacks and Hispanics. Next, we analyze how sensitive our estimates are to changes in data and modeling assumptions. We find that these changes do not affect the estimates very much. Our conclusion is that regardless of whether we use one of the simple methods or the composite method and regardless of how we vary the assumptions of the composite method, an adjustment reliably reduces population shares in states with few minorities and increases the shares of large cities."