Hansi Lo Wang is a national correspondent for NPR based in New York City. He reports on the people, power and money behind the 2020 census. Wang received the American Statistical Association's Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award for covering the Census Bureau and the Trump administration's push for a citizenship question. Check out his work on NPR and follow him on Twitter.
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Rosemary Pennington: For the last few years Stats and Stories has brought you interviews with researchers focused on the ins and outs of the 2020 census. We have talked with the former director of the US Census Bureau, John Thompson, about what it takes to pull the census off, as well as organizers of Newscounts, a project designed to improve the reporting on the U.S. census. Reporting on the census is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me in the studio are regular panelists John Bailer, Chair of Miami's Statistics Department and Richard Campbell former Chair of Media, Journalism, and Film. Our guest today is NPR's Wang Lo Wang. Wang quote, reports on the people, power and money behind the 2020 census, end quote, and in 2019 he won the ASA's Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award for his coverage of the census and the debate around the possible inclusion of a citizenship question. Wang, thank you so much for being here.
Wang Lo Wang: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.
Pennington: I'm just going to start us off asking how did the census become your beat?
Wang: I was assigned to cover the changing demographics of the U.S. I'm a reporter on NPR's National Desk, and I knew from past reporting that I did when I was on NPR's Code Switch team, which covers race and ethnicity and culture, that the census forms a lot of our understanding of what demographics are and what they look like in the United States, and I knew by the time I was assigned demographics at the National Desk that there are a lot of big decisions about to be made about the 2020 census, and the years before 2020. So, I looked into some of these decisions and went down this rabbit hole.
John Bailer: So, what kind of demographic changes have you seen that might surprise people that are listening to this podcast?
Wang: I'm not sure what would be surprising to your audience, but certainly I would say, for me, what's been really kind of the main storyline that I've been tracking, is the country is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, and how does that- what does that look like when you go down to the local level where big national trends may not be happening at the same rate or pace, and in the same way when you look community to community? So, that's one major trend that I've been looking at.
Richard Campbell: So, your background was in political science, and covering the census beat you have to deal with a lot of data and statistics. Did you have to do anything, in particular, to prepare for that as a reporter? And if so, what kinds of things did you do to get up to speed?
Wang: It's been a lot of reading of census operational plans, of interviewing former and current Census Bureau officials to wrap my head around all the different acronyms and all the different operations involved in carrying out a census, but you're right, I have to confess, I never have taken a statistics class. I feel a little underqualified to be on this podcast because of that, also underqualified to have been awarded that great honor from the American Statistical Association. I also made that confession during that conference where I received that award. But it's been a big learning curve for me to figure out how all this thinking, all the- a lot of academic work and calculations involved in carrying out the census. And ultimately my job is to understand it to a point where I can simplify it, in a way, to a more general audience. Ultimately, the census is something that may sound very bureaucratic, may sound super nerdy and wonky, but at the end of the day, it affects every aspect of our daily lives, as people living in the United States.
Bailer: I think about the census- when people first hear about it- they think how hard could it be to count how many people are there in the United States? And there's so much work that the census does in trying to enumerate households or try to get listings and other parts of the frame for defining this big problem. How do you try to tell a story where people's expectation might be that this should be a really simple task, but ends up being this herculean effort every ten years?
Wang: Well I just came back from a reporting trip from Toksook Bay Alaska; it is on the southwestern coast of the state, and it is a small remote fishing village that most people probably haven't heard about, but it is one of the many communities in the country that the Census Bureau is required by the Constitution to get an accurate and complete population count this year. And it's just telling that story of who's living here, and what are the living conditions there? And how it is so hard to get around in- not just Toksook Bay, but around the region, because there is no road system connecting village to village in that part of Alaska, and so folks are living mostly a subsistence lifestyle, and it requires a lot of planning, a lot of consultation between the Census Bureau and local officials to figure out what is the best way to make sure there's an accurate count and to make sure that when the Census Bureau sends out its workers- that families are around, that someone is there to answer the door and answer the Bureau's questions in order to collect the data that is needed. So, it's starting at a very personal level about telling a story about one community, and what their daily life is like, and how the Census Bureau has to figure out how to mesh in with that in order to make sure there's an accurate count. And then beyond that it's thinking about, yes these are ultimately- behind the doors of the Census Bureau it's a lot of statisticians thinking about the best way to order a survey, and should the question be asked in this way, and should we change that word and tweak that word, but all these little technical decisions ultimately produce information that effect how- an estimated more than 1.5 trillion dollars a year in federal funding- how that is distributed to local communities. For Medicare, for Medicaid, for schools, for roads, and how political representation- how that local power is divided up amongst states and communities, this is how we figure out how many congressional seats how many electoral college votes each state gets, as well as how political boundaries are redrawn after each census that set up each of the voting districts that are the basic building block for our elections for each decade. And so, it's constantly reminding our audiences, our readers, our listeners- that these are the stakes. This is why we are focused on all these different aspects of the census because all these small technical decisions, this bureaucratic process, this giant government operation ultimately produces information that policymakers, business leaders, and researchers rely on in order to make decisions for the next decade.
Campbell: And this follows up on your Alaska trip and your reporting there, these hard to count groups and there's a lot of – we know from other folks we've had on here talking about the census- the challenge of getting to everybody. Can you broaden that out a little bit and talk about some of those challenges?
Wang: Well, the Census Bureau is under a constitutional mandate to count every person living in the country but the fact is that ever since the very first census back in 1790 it's never been a perfect count, and in recent decades the Census Bureau's own research has shown that the groups that are undercounted historically are often communities of color, immigrant communities, renters, young children under the age of 5- there are lots of different reasons why the Census Bureau has such a hard time getting an accurate count of these specific groups, and one major challenge is a lot of government distrust. Distrust from communities that have historically had bad relationships with the federal government, and how the federal government has gone about trying to collect information and use information about groups. One part of American history that often gets brought up when we're talking about the census is during World War II, when under the 2nd War Powers Act protections that kept census information confidential and from being used for statistical purposes only – those were lifted during World War II, in order to help the federal government locate people of Japanese descent living along the west coast. And those numbers, which are demographic numbers, anonymized, just showing where there were higher concentrations of people of Japanese descent, and those numbers were used to help the federal government to locate families that, ultimately, were removed forcibly from their homes and put into incarceration camps during World War II, because the federal government, wrongfully, wanted to imprison people they thought would have ties to the Japanese government. These included US citizens of Japanese descent. The federal government has apologized for that, including the Census Bureau, for using the Census Bureau data in that way, but just that one example has reverberated through the decades and also brings back a lot of questions about this current administration. A lot of concern that the Trump administration's push for the now blocked citizenship question was a way, one concern, to help the federal government locate people who are living in the country without authorization. Even though this was a question that did not specifically ask about a person's immigration status- it only asked about a person's US citizenship status, whether they were naturalized, or born in the United States, or born to parents of U.S. citizenship, there was still a lot of fear that this data could be misused. Even the data that shows who is not a U.S. citizen living in the country, could be misused by the federal government in a way that could harm people despite there being federal laws that protect Census Bureau data that identifies individuals from being released until 72 years after that information is collected. The question is: will the public trust the government? The federal government? This current Trump administration, to uphold those laws after the information has been collected. That's a big question that I'm tracking over the next few months. So, distrust is one big element to it. Another big element is it's been a major learning process for the federal government to figure out what is the best way to reach different groups across the country. We live in such a diverse country – there's no one size fits all. Just going back to Alaska for example, most households are being asked to participate in the census around mid-March, April. Census day is April 1st, it's just a reference day, but most census activity happens around March and April. Why does the census start in remote Alaska all the way as early as January? The reason for that is because the Census Bureau learned that in order to reach these communities in remote Alaska, which are often subsistence communities that carry out hunting and fishing in the warmer months, that the best way to reach them is when the ground is still frozen when folks are still living in their communities, they're not out hunting and fishing, and also when the ground is still frozen you can still use snow machines and four-wheelers and also take a plane to visit these villages. By the time it gets warmer, by the time around Census Day, it's going to be much harder to send out census workers to go village to village to make sure every person is counted. So, it's been a major challenge for the Census Bureau to have a pulse on how people are living in the country and how that is changing decade to decade, and how it needs to keep up with different concerns and different lifestyles.
Pennington: You're listening to Stats and Stories and today we're talking to NPR's Hansi Lo Wang about reporting on the 2020 census. Wang, I want to go back to that story in Alaska, I was just looking at that before we came in and I just- it was a beautiful story. The photos are really rich, and really between that and your story- it really helps transport the viewer and the listener to that space. How do you decide when you're thinking about how you're – and I don't want to use the word humanize- but when you're trying to humanize the story of the census, how do you decide what communities you're going to visit, what stories you're going to tell in the midst of this sea of data you have to pull from?
Wang: Thank you very much for reading that story, and I just want to mention that those beautiful photographs were made by an NPR photographer Claire Harbage. It's the same process for how we approach all of our reporting, which is to look at where the story is, and for Alaska, that's where the census officially starts, and so that was a no brainer; you go where it officially starts. But beyond that, we're looking at historical trends which- where are the communities that historically have been undercounted and where there should be an extra focus and better understanding of what's going on, and what happened previously with past censuses and what could be happening in 2020? And it's making sure we also get a wide range of voices from around the country. A lot of the groups that have been historically undercounted represents some of the most diverse parts of our country, including immigrants, communities of color, and so it's finding the stories within those communities, and the people within those communities, who can help best illuminate what's going on.
Bailer: So how did you go from your undergraduate study to NPR? Can you talk a little bit about that path from where you started as an undergraduate and how you ended up deep within NPR's work and the census? Wang: Well, I applied for what's known as the Kroc Fellowship. It's basically a one-year-long training program for recent graduates and I applied for the first time and I didn't get it, got rejected, and I applied again, and that second time around is when I got my foot in the door at NPR headquarters in Washington D.C. and I've been lucky enough to stick around. They haven't kicked me out yet- for almost a decade this August. I've had lots of different roles; currently the census reporter, and it's been a journey that really started in college. Even though I majored officially in political science and minored in history in Asian studies- but if you were really with me during my college years you'd say that I majored in a program called War News Radio, which was a weekly student-run podcast during when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still very much in the news and we were trying to report on what daily life was like for folks living in Iraq and Afghanistan from our college campus south Philadelphia, and that's where I learned all about radio reporting and podcasting and first learned about NPR. I didn't grow up listening to NPR, I didn't know what it was before college, and my parents had no idea what it was, but here I am.
Pennington: Hansi, I want to ask you a question about interviewing these communities. So, you mentioned that census workers have a bit of an obstacle when they're working with underrepresented communities because of historic distrust. And Richard and I both teach journalism students and have both been journalists and have also been in that space where you're trying to interview people who are distrustful of outsiders and authorities, which can be the same thing. How, as a journalist, do you navigate that when you are trying to tell these stories about these communities?
Wang: I think you first start with honesty and that begins with who I am and what I am doing. Often times because I'm so focused on the census people often mistake me for being a Census Bureau worker and I have to be very clear I am not from the Census Bureau, I do not work for the federal government, I work for NPR, a news organization, I'm a journalist, I'm here to cover and report on the census and how it's being carried out, and how people are reacting to it, and being very clear about what I see my role as. There are a lot of different things I'm trying to do, one is to hold the government and Census Bureau accountable through all its different plans, all its different decisions, how does that match up with what's happening on the ground in all these different communities? And is it carrying out what it says it's carrying out? And also trying to get a pulse of how people are reacting to its different decisions and ad campaigns and strategies to reach people, and ultimately to understand by listening. Listening to people and their personal experiences with working for the Census Bureau, or having a Census Bureau visit their home for pasts, count or to listen to their concerns about how Census Bureau data can be misused by the federal government and why- where that concern is coming from.
Campbell: When you do these interviews, do you feel like you have to educate some of your interview subjects on the Census because of the caution that they might have about being approached by the government and the suspicions they might have? That seems to be heightened these days more than it was in 2010. Do you feel like that's part of what you do? You may be sort of a double villain: you're from the news and you're trying to report on the census. So can you talk a little bit about- not just approaching people with honesty, because I think that's a really good tip for journalists; just sort of be open, but do you feel like you have to do some educating as well?
Wang: I do. I mean, the census is for whatever reason a very specialized topic. Even though it's mentioned in the Constitution before any reference to voting, before any reference to a President; most people living in the United States don't know what the Census is, don't know what the purpose of it is, and so a lot of my reporting and interactions with people, even during my interviews, ends up in having to be some kind of civics lesson; of just some part of it this aspect of the census that because I've been focusing on it full time for close to three years now, that this is what I kind of eat sleep and breathe every day, but for most people, they only think about it once a decade. And so yes, it ends up having to be some type of explainer, not just to our audiences but people I interview, and some of that has to do with a lot of misinformation and some disinformation out there, especially in reaction that is part of the debate and legal maelstrom over the now blocked citizenship question.
Bailer: So, I'm going to flip one of the questions that was recently asked, and that is what advice do you have for statisticians that want to try to tell the stories and report on the work they've done, or help present work that's in research to the general public; what kind of things can statisticians learn to do better?
Wang: Well, having never taken a stats class, I feel like I don't have much ground to stand on to give advice, but what I always try to keep in mind is, you know, how I define my beat, which is- I don't just cover the 2020 Census, I'm covering the people, power and money behind the 2020 Census. And people are first, because ultimately this is about the people living in the United States. And I'm constantly reminding myself that it's really easy to get in the weeds when we're talking about survey methodology or differential privacy when we're talking about a lot of different statistical methods beyond the Census, but it's reminding myself that, ultimately, this is connected to people lives, and to not lose sight of that, and to think about how can I break down what are very technical concepts into something that someone just walking down the street can understand? Because it is imperative for them to understand how this works in order for them to have a true understanding of how so many different systems in our country work, from federal funding to political representation; the stakes are incredibly high when we're talking about the census. For any person living in the country not to have a basic understanding of what's at stake- that I think is what I'm trying to avoid. That's my goal; to make sure everyone is informed and that once they get that letter coming from the Census Bureau, that they know what we're really talking about here.
Campbell: Hansi, I don't know if you keep track of the local and regional journalism that's going on in terms of covering the census. I'm imagining not much is being done at a more local level, but if you could give some tips or ideas about what local or regional reporters should be looking for- the kinds of stories they should be telling about the census. Maybe you could give us a couple of ideas on what those stories should be. What should they be looking for at a regional newspaper like the Cincinnati Inquirer or the Dayton Daily News, which are the major papers in our area?
Wang: Well, as far as I can tell, anecdotally, I have a lot of competition at the local and regional level in terms of other census reporters. I have not done a count so I can't tell you the statistics, but I would say a lot of reporters are taking the best approach, which is localizing a national story. This is a national story with a lot of major local and regional implications, and it's thinking through for readers, listeners, and viewers exactly how the census can impact one neighborhood or one aspect of their community, or one federal program that's affected by census data. And I think that by highlighting those very specific examples it helps bring home to audiences exactly how it can affect their communities.
Pennington: Well that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Wang, thank you so much for being here today.
Wang: You're very welcome.
Pennington: Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University's Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter or Apple podcasts or other places you can find podcasts. To share your thoughts on the program, send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out on statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.