General policy needs for information in the 21st century,and challenges facing the Census Bureau in meeting these expectations

Abstract

Important transitions under way here and abroad suggest that the framework of our informal national measurement system must evolve to meet new policy needs. Current trends signal that this framework must allow for designing policy responses to a likely shift in global power. Perhaps the other major new change relates to changes in the environment, especially as these changes interact with the population, housing, and economic domains that the census measures. In this paper, I address broad framework questions, and sketch out likely directions for policy measurement, with particular attention to interactions across what have been designed as discrete measurement domains.