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Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them
From the historian Dan Bouk, a lesson in reading between the lines of the U.S. census to uncover the stories behind the data.
The census isn’t simply data; it’s a ritual of American democracy. And behind every neat grid of numbers is a messy human story―you just have to know how to read it.
In Democracy’s Data , the data historian Dan Bouk examines the crucial 1940 census, uncovering what those numbers both condense and cleverly a universe of meaning and uncertainty, of cultural negotiation and political struggle. He introduces us to the individuals employed as census takers, bringing us with them as they go door-to-door to make a detailed yet imperfect record of their neighbors’ lives. He takes us into the makeshift halls of the Census Bureau, where hundreds of civil servants labored with pencils, paper, and machines to divide and conquer the nation’s data. And he uses a series of data points to paint bigger pictures about the systems that govern us, such as the unchecked influence of white supremacy, the place of queer people within straight systems, and the struggle of ordinary people to be seen by the state as they see themselves.
In our age of constant quantification, Democracy’s Data teaches us how to read between the lines, and renews our perspective on the relationships between representation, identity, and governance.
The census isn’t simply data; it’s a ritual of American democracy. And behind every neat grid of numbers is a messy human story―you just have to know how to read it.
In Democracy’s Data , the data historian Dan Bouk examines the crucial 1940 census, uncovering what those numbers both condense and cleverly a universe of meaning and uncertainty, of cultural negotiation and political struggle. He introduces us to the individuals employed as census takers, bringing us with them as they go door-to-door to make a detailed yet imperfect record of their neighbors’ lives. He takes us into the makeshift halls of the Census Bureau, where hundreds of civil servants labored with pencils, paper, and machines to divide and conquer the nation’s data. And he uses a series of data points to paint bigger pictures about the systems that govern us, such as the unchecked influence of white supremacy, the place of queer people within straight systems, and the struggle of ordinary people to be seen by the state as they see themselves.
In our age of constant quantification, Democracy’s Data teaches us how to read between the lines, and renews our perspective on the relationships between representation, identity, and governance.
384 pages, Paperback
First published August 23, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
October 17, 2022
Dan Bouk is a sick alien genius.
September 27, 2023
When the 2020 census rolled around, I didn’t give it much thought. I had read the news stories about concerns over getting a full count, along with the Trump administration’s new twist about wanting to add a question regarding citizenship – a transparent attempt to suppress participation by immigrants which was thrown out by the courts. However, when I got around to completing the form, it took less than two minutes and I barely remember it.
Democracy’s Data explores the census in greater detail, discussing how it has been used, and misused, the questions it asks and, just as importantly, the ones it doesn’t ask, and the inherent absurdity of trying to fit everyone into a handful of standard statistical categories which can then be summarized and tabulated.
Individual identifying data from the US census is supposed to be kept private for seventy-two years (supposed to be, more on this later), so the household data from the 1940 census had been released when the author was writing this book. Since then, the 1950 census was released in 2022.
In 1940 Franklin Roosevelt had just won an unprecedented third term in office and wanted to remake the Democratic party to reflect his priorities. One way to do this was to use the patronage system to reward or punish politicians. The effects of the Great Depression were still very much in evidence, and the 122,000 enumerators, the people who would actually knock on doors, were reasonably well paid and the jobs highly sought after. Allowing favored politicians to dole out the positions would bolster their support and chances of re-election. However, this also caused problems, in that this census asked about the respondents’ annual income, and many people were reluctant to divulge that information to enumerators who might be their neighbors. This reluctance was amplified by Republican politicians who saw the chance to enhance their standing the in the Party and embarrass the President, and who loudly declaimed, on radio, in newspapers, and on stump speeches, about the evils of the Democratic party prying into the private lives of Americans.
The census was designed and managed almost exclusively by white men, who barely gave a thought to women and minorities. Nevertheless, the disagreements among the census designers are illuminating. For instance, were Mexicans (and for counting purposes all Central and South Americans in the United States were considered Mexican) to be counted as a separate racial category, or simply called White? Some at the census bureau wanted them counted separately to try to bring attention to the scope of immigration, while others wanted them labeled as White in order to enhance the numbers of the majority race. In the end, they became White.
The situation for African-Americans was, to no one’s surprise, much worse. Later statistical studies would show that in many states they were greatly undercounted: by 25% in New York, 34% in New Jersey, and 40% in Washington DC, but only by 2.4% in Mississippi. Why? Because the 14th Amendment required Blacks to be counted as full people (they had been considered 3/5ths of a person in the Constitution), and Mississippi politicians wanted them all identified in order to maximize the number of seats the state would get in Congress. They didn’t want to give them any rights, of course, and Blacks had been murdered by police just for attempting to register to vote, but the white politicians wanted them counted nonetheless.
Today’s Census Bureau makes extravagant claims for protecting individual census responses, guaranteeing people that their personal data will not be revealed for seventy-two years. Similar promises were made for the 1940 census, and then came World War II. When that happened the Bureau could not turn over private data fast enough, wanting to show its support for the war effort. It provided detailed data on request to any government agency that asked for it and was used, among other things, to search for draft dodgers. Its most deplorable actions, however, were to turn over lists of names and addresses of German, Italian, and Japanese people living in the United States, even if they were native or naturalized citizens. With the Supreme Count’s enthusiastic approval, over 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were first prohibited from living along the West Coast, and then rounded up and placed in camps for three years. Land of the free and home the brave, indeed.
The more you think about it, the odder the census starts to seem. No one doubts its purpose, and a country should know how many people it has. For the United States the census numbers not only apportion seats in the House of Representatives, they also direct $1.5 trillion dollars a year to states based on their population counts. Still, the devil is in the details. If you are a white Cisgender American of European ancestry none of the questions asked would give you pause, but not all people fit nicely into those simple buckets, and the questions can generate a lot of soul searching for some. Since the 2020 census asked about family ancestry, what about people who might be, for instance, Haitian on one side of their family and Colombian on the other? What you choose to put down favors one group over another, with implications for government grants and educational priorities. The author even discusses the difficulties he had fitting his own unconventional family life into statistical categories the census could enumerate.
In the early decades of the country, the number of Representatives grew along with the population, but by 1940 the size of the House of Representatives was fixed at 435, so states gained or lost seats based on the census results. Preliminary results of the 2020 census show that the United States has over 331 million people, so each Representative represents 700,000 people. This means most of us are simply numbers, of no interest unless we can aggregate into a large enough group to get attention (and campaign contributions are a way to get that attention). A good example of this is that in California an Indian tribe greased enough palms to get $100 million in tax dollars for a freeway exit built in front of their casino, on grounds of traffic safety, even though the existing exit only backed up one day of the year, on Thanksgiving. And so it goes.
Few people spend much time thinking about the census, but there are interesting stories buried in the data, about who gets counted, who does not, and whose information has to be shoehorned into standard categories that don’t really fit. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this book, but I enjoyed it, and it gave me some things to think about.
Democracy’s Data explores the census in greater detail, discussing how it has been used, and misused, the questions it asks and, just as importantly, the ones it doesn’t ask, and the inherent absurdity of trying to fit everyone into a handful of standard statistical categories which can then be summarized and tabulated.
Individual identifying data from the US census is supposed to be kept private for seventy-two years (supposed to be, more on this later), so the household data from the 1940 census had been released when the author was writing this book. Since then, the 1950 census was released in 2022.
In 1940 Franklin Roosevelt had just won an unprecedented third term in office and wanted to remake the Democratic party to reflect his priorities. One way to do this was to use the patronage system to reward or punish politicians. The effects of the Great Depression were still very much in evidence, and the 122,000 enumerators, the people who would actually knock on doors, were reasonably well paid and the jobs highly sought after. Allowing favored politicians to dole out the positions would bolster their support and chances of re-election. However, this also caused problems, in that this census asked about the respondents’ annual income, and many people were reluctant to divulge that information to enumerators who might be their neighbors. This reluctance was amplified by Republican politicians who saw the chance to enhance their standing the in the Party and embarrass the President, and who loudly declaimed, on radio, in newspapers, and on stump speeches, about the evils of the Democratic party prying into the private lives of Americans.
The census was designed and managed almost exclusively by white men, who barely gave a thought to women and minorities. Nevertheless, the disagreements among the census designers are illuminating. For instance, were Mexicans (and for counting purposes all Central and South Americans in the United States were considered Mexican) to be counted as a separate racial category, or simply called White? Some at the census bureau wanted them counted separately to try to bring attention to the scope of immigration, while others wanted them labeled as White in order to enhance the numbers of the majority race. In the end, they became White.
The situation for African-Americans was, to no one’s surprise, much worse. Later statistical studies would show that in many states they were greatly undercounted: by 25% in New York, 34% in New Jersey, and 40% in Washington DC, but only by 2.4% in Mississippi. Why? Because the 14th Amendment required Blacks to be counted as full people (they had been considered 3/5ths of a person in the Constitution), and Mississippi politicians wanted them all identified in order to maximize the number of seats the state would get in Congress. They didn’t want to give them any rights, of course, and Blacks had been murdered by police just for attempting to register to vote, but the white politicians wanted them counted nonetheless.
Today’s Census Bureau makes extravagant claims for protecting individual census responses, guaranteeing people that their personal data will not be revealed for seventy-two years. Similar promises were made for the 1940 census, and then came World War II. When that happened the Bureau could not turn over private data fast enough, wanting to show its support for the war effort. It provided detailed data on request to any government agency that asked for it and was used, among other things, to search for draft dodgers. Its most deplorable actions, however, were to turn over lists of names and addresses of German, Italian, and Japanese people living in the United States, even if they were native or naturalized citizens. With the Supreme Count’s enthusiastic approval, over 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were first prohibited from living along the West Coast, and then rounded up and placed in camps for three years. Land of the free and home the brave, indeed.
The more you think about it, the odder the census starts to seem. No one doubts its purpose, and a country should know how many people it has. For the United States the census numbers not only apportion seats in the House of Representatives, they also direct $1.5 trillion dollars a year to states based on their population counts. Still, the devil is in the details. If you are a white Cisgender American of European ancestry none of the questions asked would give you pause, but not all people fit nicely into those simple buckets, and the questions can generate a lot of soul searching for some. Since the 2020 census asked about family ancestry, what about people who might be, for instance, Haitian on one side of their family and Colombian on the other? What you choose to put down favors one group over another, with implications for government grants and educational priorities. The author even discusses the difficulties he had fitting his own unconventional family life into statistical categories the census could enumerate.
In the early decades of the country, the number of Representatives grew along with the population, but by 1940 the size of the House of Representatives was fixed at 435, so states gained or lost seats based on the census results. Preliminary results of the 2020 census show that the United States has over 331 million people, so each Representative represents 700,000 people. This means most of us are simply numbers, of no interest unless we can aggregate into a large enough group to get attention (and campaign contributions are a way to get that attention). A good example of this is that in California an Indian tribe greased enough palms to get $100 million in tax dollars for a freeway exit built in front of their casino, on grounds of traffic safety, even though the existing exit only backed up one day of the year, on Thanksgiving. And so it goes.
Few people spend much time thinking about the census, but there are interesting stories buried in the data, about who gets counted, who does not, and whose information has to be shoehorned into standard categories that don’t really fit. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this book, but I enjoyed it, and it gave me some things to think about.
November 20, 2022
I spent 18 months on the inside of the micro-managed US Census project. We covered Albemarle and each county surrounding it. In all that time, I had little thought of the macro-picture of the Census and it's multi-faceted applications. None of those occurred to me until I read Dan's Democracy Data book.
It was quite interesting to see the machinations that went on behind the scenes. The politically powerful had tried every ten year cycle to influence the outcome by dictating the inputs. Despite getting to influence who conducted the Census by appointing their favorite partisans, they did not really have much control on the outcome.
Dan argues that in one of the last years that a complete physical canvass was conducted, it proceeded to generate a very small margin of error. But with the advancement of the modern digital world, we may never see such accuracy again.
Dan's best contribution was turning the boring side of data into lively, relevant information.
It was quite interesting to see the machinations that went on behind the scenes. The politically powerful had tried every ten year cycle to influence the outcome by dictating the inputs. Despite getting to influence who conducted the Census by appointing their favorite partisans, they did not really have much control on the outcome.
Dan argues that in one of the last years that a complete physical canvass was conducted, it proceeded to generate a very small margin of error. But with the advancement of the modern digital world, we may never see such accuracy again.
Dan's best contribution was turning the boring side of data into lively, relevant information.
March 14, 2023
Has some interesting tidbits, but by the end of the book the author is reduced to recounting some funny tweets he saw, and confiding that he didn't pay very close attention when filling out the 2020 census.
December 19, 2022
For me, the redeeming qualities of this book were that it was really well researched and I learned a lot about the census. However, I honestly walked away finding the census to be less important than when I started reading. I'm glad the author made it more readable, but probably not the most exciting topic - and I felt like the book could have ended a couple chapters earlier.
December 3, 2022
Really choking on the personal anecdotes and prone to weak digressions. That said, it definitely includes some interesting sections and there aren't many good census books.
January 9, 2023
Good Book About the Census
The author uses the 1940 census to begin discussion about the census as a whole. It’s origin, modernization, uses and who works on them. A bit of a dry subject but interesting.
The author uses the 1940 census to begin discussion about the census as a whole. It’s origin, modernization, uses and who works on them. A bit of a dry subject but interesting.
January 9, 2023
Good mix of history and social science focusing on the 1940 census. A good book for data nerds that examines how questions are phrased, how info is collected and what is done with it afterwards and the politics of each step.
October 21, 2022
Democracy’s Data got me to question work I did using census documents back in grad school. I love when something makes me think again.
February 26, 2023
As is often the case for me, I wish the author had kept their own politics and story out of the narrative because it distracts from my ability to see them as someone telling a historical story that strives for objectivity. I did find the close analysis of the 1940 census to be super interesting and fun to learn about. In order to convince people of historical realities you have to try to put your own views aside, otherwise you look like your are digging for facts that support your preexisting POV. Academia already gets tagged with having a liberal bias, and I think the final 2 chapters of this book are a great illustration of where that comes from. As a liberal who teaches in a conservative community I've become very aware of the ways that a person can alienate people while trying to educate them. If the goal is to educate, leaving your own views and biases aside is necessary. It's why I love listening to NPR, but not to Jim and Marjorie on Boston Public Radio. J&M tell me how they feel about the news and I don't care. I just want to know the news in as objective a fashion as possible so I can make up my own mind, but, I realize, given the ratings that Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow get, that I'm in the minority. People want their news mixed with hot takes and I just really don't.
TLDR - read this book but stop before the conclusion or epilogue and just enjoy the nerdy stuff about how cool the census is!
TLDR - read this book but stop before the conclusion or epilogue and just enjoy the nerdy stuff about how cool the census is!
February 19, 2024
This was a solid, easy read. I’ve found that I really enjoy narrative histories. Like other good narrative histories, Dan Bouk delivers an encompassing, thoughtful, and engaging text that balances both story and facts/trivia. The book holds a good pace throughout and Bouk broke down his conjectures fluidly from chapter to chapter. This is a good introduction to the importance of the census and the power it holds. Possibly even more, it’s a great book to reevaluate the idea that numbers aren’t simply numbers. Rather, they are components to a broader story unfolding within a study — census or any other inventory of nouns.
Unfortunately, I didn’t walk away any new revelations or reflections. I agreed with Bouk’s argument, found his insights intriguing, and research impressive. However, my appreciation for the census as a logistical challenge, political tool, and storytelling device remains the same after my reading. I may know more granular details, but my understanding of the census hasn’t substantially changed. I will say, though, that I am more excited for 2030s decennial census.
It was in the epilogue that Bouk’s mentions Jesse Ball’s vision of the census as “a collection of people’s reflections and stories and an unlimited expression of identity.” I wish this idea was explored more in a chapter as its own — possibly a chapter on future radical revisions of the census to include the minoritized communities Bouk often focuses on.
Unfortunately, I didn’t walk away any new revelations or reflections. I agreed with Bouk’s argument, found his insights intriguing, and research impressive. However, my appreciation for the census as a logistical challenge, political tool, and storytelling device remains the same after my reading. I may know more granular details, but my understanding of the census hasn’t substantially changed. I will say, though, that I am more excited for 2030s decennial census.
It was in the epilogue that Bouk’s mentions Jesse Ball’s vision of the census as “a collection of people’s reflections and stories and an unlimited expression of identity.” I wish this idea was explored more in a chapter as its own — possibly a chapter on future radical revisions of the census to include the minoritized communities Bouk often focuses on.
October 19, 2023
This is yet another look at the systemic racism in the United States--the book focuses on the 1940 census for some in-depth reporting but has a sub-text of the whole process of the census.
It this is a powerful bit of protest against centuries of Black people being misidentified, undercounted and downright erased from the public record. The author is a historian who has also studied computational mathematics, and he believes passionately in the ideals of the census, but reveals in abundant detail how badly it has failed society. Native Americans were long excluded and ethnic classification abetted among other horrors the roundup of Japanese Americans to internment camps and the deportation of Mexican immigrants.
In theory, counting the population seems so basic, so neutral: a math problem that requires meticulous attention to detail. But the numerical is political, with representation and resources at stake, so of course it has been manipulated. Bouk shows how, from its beginnings, the census has been subject to partisan interests, which continues up to and including the last census.
I am reminded of the quote that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. It is a messy business when you look at it closely and it is miraculous that it works at all.
It this is a powerful bit of protest against centuries of Black people being misidentified, undercounted and downright erased from the public record. The author is a historian who has also studied computational mathematics, and he believes passionately in the ideals of the census, but reveals in abundant detail how badly it has failed society. Native Americans were long excluded and ethnic classification abetted among other horrors the roundup of Japanese Americans to internment camps and the deportation of Mexican immigrants.
In theory, counting the population seems so basic, so neutral: a math problem that requires meticulous attention to detail. But the numerical is political, with representation and resources at stake, so of course it has been manipulated. Bouk shows how, from its beginnings, the census has been subject to partisan interests, which continues up to and including the last census.
I am reminded of the quote that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. It is a messy business when you look at it closely and it is miraculous that it works at all.
December 21, 2022
After 72 years, the full records from one of the US's decennial censuses become public. To fully understand the 2020 census, we'll have to wait until almost the next century, but the records from 1940 became available in 2012. And Dan Bouk, a historian of quantification, was ready to explore what we can learn from them.
If you are what you measure, then what you choose to measure in a census has a major impact on a census, a full-scale analysis of a country's population. Bouk probes this question both through philosophical musings and discussion of the importance to read behind the numbers (or the columns, rows, categories, etc.). And he devotes chapters to specific dimensions of this. Who chose the questions on the census? Which relationships and identities got asked about and which did not? What happened to people who did not clearly align with those categories if everyone still needed to be counted? Who collected the information? What tools did they have to analyze the information? How did a census and its design interact with major national and international events like the Great Depression and World War II or with systems of white supremacy or old-fashioned patronage? Bouk explores all of these and more, often zeroing in on specific census tracts to add a narrative component.
Democracy is government by the people, and the most contested part of democracy will always remain who constitutes "the people." And because of that, a census will always have political questions around it -- it is inextricably linked to understandings of individual and social identity, let alone the ability of an administrative state to function. Bouk's book not only gives us a greater historical understanding of a pivotal period in US history but also inspires the reader to think more critically about numbers, forms, and all of the other things that one takes for granted when dealing with in mundane ways.
If you are what you measure, then what you choose to measure in a census has a major impact on a census, a full-scale analysis of a country's population. Bouk probes this question both through philosophical musings and discussion of the importance to read behind the numbers (or the columns, rows, categories, etc.). And he devotes chapters to specific dimensions of this. Who chose the questions on the census? Which relationships and identities got asked about and which did not? What happened to people who did not clearly align with those categories if everyone still needed to be counted? Who collected the information? What tools did they have to analyze the information? How did a census and its design interact with major national and international events like the Great Depression and World War II or with systems of white supremacy or old-fashioned patronage? Bouk explores all of these and more, often zeroing in on specific census tracts to add a narrative component.
Democracy is government by the people, and the most contested part of democracy will always remain who constitutes "the people." And because of that, a census will always have political questions around it -- it is inextricably linked to understandings of individual and social identity, let alone the ability of an administrative state to function. Bouk's book not only gives us a greater historical understanding of a pivotal period in US history but also inspires the reader to think more critically about numbers, forms, and all of the other things that one takes for granted when dealing with in mundane ways.
December 3, 2022
Remarkably interesting history of the census. The author uses the recently released records from census of 1940 to look at how the data was collected and analyzed. The book dragged a bit at the end, rehashing what has already been discussed beyond what was necessary but the author’s enthusiasm for the topic excuses that. The Trump administration attempt to interfere in the 2020 census was not the first time.
December 31, 2022
An engrossing look at all the small bits of data that the US Census patches together to make a picture of the country as a whole. I work with Census files a lot and this was excellent.
Note: I did sit on an online panel with the author sponsored by the National Archives. I hadn’t read his book then.
Note: I did sit on an online panel with the author sponsored by the National Archives. I hadn’t read his book then.
August 8, 2023
Excellent and well researched!!
October 21, 2023
As a social science researcher I often wonder what the source for aggregated data looks like and the US census was a wonderful story to learn aboutThe implications of all us interjecting ourselves into the process was wonderfully articulated and the fraught political environment that seeks to weaponize findings has been going on since data were collectedGreat book!
September 9, 2025
3.5
I read this for work lol
This book is less about the Census and instead uses the Census to tell a story of American history.
I read this for work lol
This book is less about the Census and instead uses the Census to tell a story of American history.
November 7, 2025
overall just wish it had more data and less history, with peace and love tho. just thought it was gonna be my cup of tea and it wasn’t. still enjoyed it! ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡
November 28, 2023
If I were to go back to college and re-earn my history degree, I'd certainly use this as a starting point for one of my papers.
February 6, 2025
relied too heavily on anecdotes for there to be a cohesive narrative. the epilogue was interesting but otherwise not sure I really got much out of this
October 10, 2022
some are calling 'democracy's data' "nerdy," but, based on the title, expectations of hidden stories and presumed media literacy, it's not quite the numbers-heavy experience. and part of that is due to limited resources--census data becomes "unsealed" after 72 years of alleged anonymity. alleged, because of a fight (still relevant) over the government using personal data or not, promised until wwii, where it was used against japanese americans for systematic internment, and against immigration overall. but even before that, the guy responsible for the dewey decimal system with index cards, also oversaw the collected data --the census department the earliest adopter of using computers -- hole-punched census information fed into machines, largely by women, who got little credit, black women even less, praise went to the inanimate object reading data; the material was sold to corporations willing to pay top dollar to better understand the consumer, and who had money. income was one of the most divisive aspects of census, not necessarily because the government would know (though that argument was used by the rich), townspeople didn't want their -- neighbors -- finding out and treating each other differently, which is incredibly american. also american, the census largely designed by all white (mostly male) powerful people; was the racist vagueness growing more specific, yet still offensive, to tinker with voting rights. "white" was always choice number "1" on the form (opposed to just marking "w"), and was politicized into who "deserved" to be marked as such. one example being mexicans were considered white by the census a hundred years ago, the term "illegal aliens" growing out of paranoia over bootlegging across borders during prohibition (despite mainly smuggled through canada); and as economic conditions worsened in the u.s. depression era, "mexican" became a new category used to by the government to falsely allege blame, giving way to stricter immigration laws, where being marked as non-white affected nationalizing status. all this determined via individual assumptions and biases by door to door census collectors. all the while, assimilationist politicians argued whiteness based on spanish colonization. the census posters of white uncle sam demanding a white roll call, and the government search for "mr. average american"--a married, 20 something white father-- didn't help with racial bias, either. today, there is an aim for no paper trail, all census taking aimed towards digital-only survey... and maintenance (good luck). what good is census taking, though, if statistics are instead formulated by biased sample sizes, fewer true answers, less accuracy, entire populations based on 2 percent of people questioned--gop favors less exact total numeration for redistricting purposes etc., though trump's wilbur ross certainly tried to get a more intrusive citizenship question added to repress immigrant representation; luckily ineptitude, time, and supreme court clashed, running out of time to print new materials. bouk's ending with his personal account and feelings regarding filling out the census was a rather endearing way to close out a book largely of horrors. for some, classifications mean nothing, others, feel too intrusive (authenticity varied), but there is also a factor serving cultural and societal importance, which shows improvement or "the end of day"--depending on how one reads the data.
March 22, 2023
Dense but very worthwhile
April 21, 2022
I will confess that I came to Democracy's Data by Dan Bouk with a bit of apprehension. The ideas it seemed to cover interested me as both history and as a call to safeguard future censuses from the calamity of the 2020 census. But it is a book about data, how readable could it be? Turns out, quite readable and enjoyable.
Bouk starts by offering a personal glimpse into his motivation and how it led him to the 1940 census. He then offers everything from chapters that could be excerpted as how-tos for reading not only the census but many other data sets to chapters that would be right at home in a history book.
Some of the chapters absolutely pulled me in and had me looking both to our past and to our future. Some chapters had me searching for census information myself online. Readers will be able to take whatever they want from this book. Want to better understand the census and how it is used as well as how you can use it? Want some history of the census in general but the 1940 one in particular? Want some history of the New Deal and the infighting that it inspired? Want a cautionary tale for why we need to strive for fair censuses, as well as how we might try to even define what fair is? This book will offer these takeaways for you, based largely on what you bring to the book yourself.
I would highly recommend this for those interested in how our government makes many of the decisions that involve the population, from assigning legislative seats to fueling partisan conspiracy theories.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
Bouk starts by offering a personal glimpse into his motivation and how it led him to the 1940 census. He then offers everything from chapters that could be excerpted as how-tos for reading not only the census but many other data sets to chapters that would be right at home in a history book.
Some of the chapters absolutely pulled me in and had me looking both to our past and to our future. Some chapters had me searching for census information myself online. Readers will be able to take whatever they want from this book. Want to better understand the census and how it is used as well as how you can use it? Want some history of the census in general but the 1940 one in particular? Want some history of the New Deal and the infighting that it inspired? Want a cautionary tale for why we need to strive for fair censuses, as well as how we might try to even define what fair is? This book will offer these takeaways for you, based largely on what you bring to the book yourself.
I would highly recommend this for those interested in how our government makes many of the decisions that involve the population, from assigning legislative seats to fueling partisan conspiracy theories.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
December 24, 2022
I read about this book in the 'Book World' section of The Washington Post and put the book on hold at my local library. The review suggested to me that the book was about the history of the U.S. census. However, soon after diving into this book, I found I was wrong. The book is really about only the 1940 census and the "backroom" deals that the congressional people and federal agencies made in putting together the 1940 census, their processing/interpreting of that data, and how the data from this census was used to single out segments of the U.S. population in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. There were some minor historical anecdotal stories about the "backroom" deals of past congressional people that were interesting to learn about, but the majority of the book focused on the happenings surrounding the 1940 Census. I didn't enjoy that the book was only about the 1940 Census even though some segments of that were interesting. I was really looking for a book on the history of the U.S. Census.
October 28, 2022
The insights into census data, the historical context of each decade’s rolls, and the general understanding of its back of house production and enumeration procedures are all critical points for genealogists who use these records so heavily. There is so much to understand in the details. This book was a great read for increasing that knowledge and helping us to make the most out of every census entry from the big picture down to the smallest clue.
April 29, 2023
The author's passion is so infectious - loved this deep dive and better understanding I have of what censuses from another time looked like.
“If those questions sound ridiculous, that is evidence that we have come to believe that some ways governments think about people are natural and others are not.”
“Readers accustomed to taking data for granted and to assuming that data can at least approximate a universal ideal of objectivity may find what follows particularly troubling.”
“The enumerator arrived at each door trailing a web of intersecting commitments to science and politics, the two impossible to untangle.”
“Names are things we use as well as things that others use to grasp and hold onto a sense of us. Names don’t spring fully formed from the platonic ideal of our identities. Names are social technologies, built and negotiated through extensive social systems.”
“Hacking has shown that the categories created to keep track of a worrisome group (the categories printed in blue ribbon reports and official statistics) those categories take on a life of their own.”
“People work hard to make data appear capable of speech and also to set limits on that speech. They struggle to control the things a data set will encompass, what questions it can answer, and on what topics it will be silent. That work and those struggles matter a great deal when what data appears to say or seems incapable of saying has potent political consequences.”
“Today the census honors racial self-identifications, but in 1940 the enumerators ascribed race more than they asked about it.”
“Even before the US formally entered WWII, the war was prying open access to data in the census bureau’s vaults and forcing the bureau to sacrifice its ambition to process and publish a nation’s statistics in the name of mass producing facts about individuals.”
“Democracy's data is only as good as the democracy it serves.”
“My romantic longing for the census to serve as a point of connection cannot make such connections real. And, more important, not all connections lead to happy endings.”
“You may have ended up from time to time rather down on the data. This is a feature of reading data, not a bug. The shock and surprise subside with time and feelings of revulsion can be directed toward reform. But one cannot change a data system or remake the society that produces such data without looking squarely at the data, without examining precisely how the numbers get made. And the more we read data, the more we play in the muck from which all good data is made, the more resilient we will be to looking squarely at complicated data making processes to seeing them clearly without shrinking away or overreacting. And looking squarely at complicated data making processes is becoming an essential activity for all those who wish to have a say in shaping our world.”
“If those questions sound ridiculous, that is evidence that we have come to believe that some ways governments think about people are natural and others are not.”
“Readers accustomed to taking data for granted and to assuming that data can at least approximate a universal ideal of objectivity may find what follows particularly troubling.”
“The enumerator arrived at each door trailing a web of intersecting commitments to science and politics, the two impossible to untangle.”
“Names are things we use as well as things that others use to grasp and hold onto a sense of us. Names don’t spring fully formed from the platonic ideal of our identities. Names are social technologies, built and negotiated through extensive social systems.”
“Hacking has shown that the categories created to keep track of a worrisome group (the categories printed in blue ribbon reports and official statistics) those categories take on a life of their own.”
“People work hard to make data appear capable of speech and also to set limits on that speech. They struggle to control the things a data set will encompass, what questions it can answer, and on what topics it will be silent. That work and those struggles matter a great deal when what data appears to say or seems incapable of saying has potent political consequences.”
“Today the census honors racial self-identifications, but in 1940 the enumerators ascribed race more than they asked about it.”
“Even before the US formally entered WWII, the war was prying open access to data in the census bureau’s vaults and forcing the bureau to sacrifice its ambition to process and publish a nation’s statistics in the name of mass producing facts about individuals.”
“Democracy's data is only as good as the democracy it serves.”
“My romantic longing for the census to serve as a point of connection cannot make such connections real. And, more important, not all connections lead to happy endings.”
“You may have ended up from time to time rather down on the data. This is a feature of reading data, not a bug. The shock and surprise subside with time and feelings of revulsion can be directed toward reform. But one cannot change a data system or remake the society that produces such data without looking squarely at the data, without examining precisely how the numbers get made. And the more we read data, the more we play in the muck from which all good data is made, the more resilient we will be to looking squarely at complicated data making processes to seeing them clearly without shrinking away or overreacting. And looking squarely at complicated data making processes is becoming an essential activity for all those who wish to have a say in shaping our world.”
October 20, 2023
Democracy, as history has proven time immemorial, is not just an abstract set of concepts – freedom of speech, representative government, theories spoken between academics – but a physical daily act. It requires active participation by its citizenry to be sustained, and its study today proves a remarkable example in both the emergence of democracy out of seeming impossibility and the ways in which it can crumble before the very eyes of those who seek to uphold it. B.R. Ambedkar, one of India’s preeminent economists and a key figure in drafting its constitution, tells us that laws cannot secure rights, only moral conscience and the will of the people can. Indeed, it is these thin relationships, those between strangers and people we do not know, that thread the needle of democracy. The true phenomenon of democracy is that it forces us to care about the well-being and livelihood of all those who we consider fellow citizens, not just those with whom we share thick – familial or close friend – relationships. Any future assessment of democratic states, their emergence, politics and potential failure, will thus comprise not only their laws and historical facts but their moral conscience – an ability to sustain thin relationships even in the face of resistance.
It is this profound physical act of democracy that Bouk walks through here - our decennial census. An analysis of our system reveals deeply flawed individuals, to be sure, but also people working tirelessly toward those most abstract goals: to make sure each American is accurately and wholly represented. Any data set that tries to distill a population down to line items will omit much of the humanity these numbers capture - but it is this exact effort that Bouk upholds as an emblem of a successful democratic system. At its core, the census aims to eulogize each American - a political act - and in doing so reinforces the thin relationships between the population that are so crucial for upholding democracy.
It is this profound physical act of democracy that Bouk walks through here - our decennial census. An analysis of our system reveals deeply flawed individuals, to be sure, but also people working tirelessly toward those most abstract goals: to make sure each American is accurately and wholly represented. Any data set that tries to distill a population down to line items will omit much of the humanity these numbers capture - but it is this exact effort that Bouk upholds as an emblem of a successful democratic system. At its core, the census aims to eulogize each American - a political act - and in doing so reinforces the thin relationships between the population that are so crucial for upholding democracy.
July 17, 2025
There are some interesting little stories here, especially about the enumerators in the 1940 US census and the problems they had in their encounters with some of our citizens. But overall, this account of the 1940 census is rather lightweight. I practiced speed reading techniques on parts of it. I agree that it is important and mildly interesting to know the role that politics and the associated bigotry played in the organization of the 1940 census, but I doubt many readers were surprised. And in that vein, I appreciated the reference to Trump's attempt to insert a question about citizenship in the 2020 census.
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The author mentions the IBM tabulating machines used in the 1940 census, but there is no mention of how they worked. I understand that this book is not intended as a study of the mechanics of these machines, but even a short description would have been helpful. There is mention of a type of check column for the enumerators in the census. I suspect that those data could be easily tabulated by the machines. The text seemed to me to suggest that these were checked manually.
Although I now see what this book was intended to be, I did hope for something on data analysis of the census, perhaps a single graph.
The author mentions an argument over two different methods of apportioning the 435-seat House of Representatives among the political parties, "major fractions" and "equal proportions". No attempt is made to explain what these are. Wikipedia explains it in articles entitled, The Huntington-Hill Method and Highest Averages Method. From the first article, the method selects the allocation such that no transfer of a seat from one state to another can reduce the percent error in representation for both states.
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The author mentions the IBM tabulating machines used in the 1940 census, but there is no mention of how they worked. I understand that this book is not intended as a study of the mechanics of these machines, but even a short description would have been helpful. There is mention of a type of check column for the enumerators in the census. I suspect that those data could be easily tabulated by the machines. The text seemed to me to suggest that these were checked manually.
Although I now see what this book was intended to be, I did hope for something on data analysis of the census, perhaps a single graph.
The author mentions an argument over two different methods of apportioning the 435-seat House of Representatives among the political parties, "major fractions" and "equal proportions". No attempt is made to explain what these are. Wikipedia explains it in articles entitled, The Huntington-Hill Method and Highest Averages Method. From the first article, the method selects the allocation such that no transfer of a seat from one state to another can reduce the percent error in representation for both states.
August 25, 2022
I was excited to read Democracy's Data by Dan Bouk because, although it is very much a niche book, it fills a gap in the published histories of census taking. There are a few readable titles on the subject generally, but nothing that I have found is so full of census data and interpretation. In fact, if you are not a reader interested in family history and/or data iterations, you might find yourself drowning in the details (and some repetitions) Bouk provides.
The author explains what it was like to be a census-taker (or enumerator), how race and gender were counted in an era when racism and sexism abounded, and how heads of households reacted to being asked about their incomes and home ownership. He delves into the politics of the census and how important it was for all people to be represented so that House and Electoral College apportionments could be accurate.
I especially enjoyed the last quarter of the book where Bouk compares the 1940 census to earlier and subsequent ones, including the 2020 census. He notes the benefits of computers and standardization that have come about because of censuses. He also explains the difficulties in counting everyone and interpreting the data collected.
Overall, I liked this book. If you are a data nerd or enjoy genealogy, this might just be one to add to your TBR pile.
Many thanks to NetGalley for providing a digital copy for review.
The author explains what it was like to be a census-taker (or enumerator), how race and gender were counted in an era when racism and sexism abounded, and how heads of households reacted to being asked about their incomes and home ownership. He delves into the politics of the census and how important it was for all people to be represented so that House and Electoral College apportionments could be accurate.
I especially enjoyed the last quarter of the book where Bouk compares the 1940 census to earlier and subsequent ones, including the 2020 census. He notes the benefits of computers and standardization that have come about because of censuses. He also explains the difficulties in counting everyone and interpreting the data collected.
Overall, I liked this book. If you are a data nerd or enjoy genealogy, this might just be one to add to your TBR pile.
Many thanks to NetGalley for providing a digital copy for review.
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