Season 3, Episode 3: Differential privacy and the Census

Starting with the 2020 Decennial Census, the U.S. Census Bureau is implementing a new framework to ensure privacy of the census takers – essentially, making sure that a nefarious actor can’t identify an individual from published census tables. Although the U.S. Census Bureau has been employing various strategies for decades, this new framework is very different. And although the intent of this framework has good intentions, the tradeoff between privacy protection and data accuracy will mean rural areas will have less than accurate data. 

On this episode, Kelly Asche – Senior Research Associate, interviews David Van Riper from the Minnesota Population Center who has been one of the leading researchers exploring this tradeoff between privacy and accuracy, and what it might mean for rural data.