A recent U.S Census Bureau announcement to possibly remove most of the marriage questions on its national survey has caused great concern among researchers who believe the questions allow them to obtain vital information about marriage and families.
The United States Census Bureau, the government's main resource for polls and demography, is considering eliminating five marital questions on their American Community Survey, which polls over 3.5 million homes across the nation. The public comment period on the proposal ends Dec. 30.
The five marriage questions that are being considered for removal are: In the past 12 months did the person get married? In the past 12 months did the person get widowed? In the past 12 months did the person get divorced? How many times has the person been married, and what year did the person last get married?
"It will be really unfortunate if we lose this information. Right now we are going through such a social, cultural and economic transformation. This fine granularity really helps us understand how it (marriage) is articulating itself in people's lives. Otherwise you are just left to guess," said Pamela Perlich, a senior research economist at the University of Utah.
Public responses needed
Jim Treat, chief of the American Community Survey Office, explained that the content review for the office questions is to investigate whether the ACS is the most appropriate vehicle for each question on the survey.
"It (the ACS) is the nation's largest household survey, requiring the participation of approximately 2.5 percent of the population each year. As such, we have an obligation to ensure that the questions are not unduly burdening the American public but are, in fact, required by federal agencies, either by statues or other legal mandates, to carry out their missions," he said.
Treat explained that many programs use the data, but their research uncovered only one required federal use for the marriage questions — the Social Security Administration.
"The Social Security Administration has a required legal basis for using the question at the state level only to develop actuarial tables for benefits projections," said Treat.
A Pew Research Center report said the bureau is under pressure from Congress to justify every question on the survey, which some political conservatives claim is an invasion of people’s privacy.
Perlich added that recent news accounts also indicate cost may also be a factor.
"It is an attempt to contain costs and reduce the amount of burden for the people who respond to the survey. But the downside of that is that you lose really valuable information that is not being collected in any other way," said Perlich.
Researchers concerned
If the Census Bureau decides to drop the questions, it would be the second time in two decades that a government agency stopped collecting data on marriage among Americans.
The National Center for Health Statistics stopped collecting marriage and divorce counts in 1996. The Pew report explained that state records lacked data researchers needed to analyze marriage trends. To remedy the problem, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services asked the U.S. Census Bureau to add marital history questions to its survey in 2008.
State records often lack details about age, race, income, education or other factors that researchers use to analyze which groups are most likely to wed or divorce. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the health statistics center, asked the Census Bureau to add marriage and divorce questions to its survey to fill that void.
Kelly Raley, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, said dropping the marriage questions again will hamper her personal research.
The survey office data allow her and other researchers to create estimates for age-specific marriage rates, and find out who has access to marriage and how those statistics are changing over time.
Researchers can also better understand how the recession has affected divorce rates and which age groups are experiencing the most divorces, Raley also noted.
"There is no way to track trends in divorce over time except for using the ACS because the National Center for Health Statistics no longer provides detailed information about divorce," said Raley.
Raley points out that data collection is essential to a much deeper matter — the well–being of families across the nation.
"I think there is a lot of research to show that families matter. They matter for your health, well–being, but in general, people like to have stable families," said Raley. "And if we are not able to track that it will be a loss in our ability to understand the hardships and the difficulties that families in the United States are experiencing today."
Advocating to keep the questions
Hoping to prevent the loss of key marriage data, research organizations have launched a campaign to convince the Census Bureau to reconsider its proposal.
The National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio has created a website to and the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Centers recently sent a letter to the Department of Commerce, where the Census Bureau is located, advocating to keep the marriage questions.
"If these questions are now dropped, the United States will become the only country in the developed world that does not generate annual age-specific rates of marriage and divorce," the letter states.
Treat said that in the public comment period the survey office is also seeking input on other alternative "data sources or survey vehicles that would meet the state-level requirements of the Social Security Administration. We are also asking the public to describe their need for the data and whether there are any known alternate data sources."
He said that all of the comments they receive will ultimately help inform the recommendation that they will submit to the Office of Management Budget, which will weigh the input received and then make a final decision about the survey changes.
"I am concerned about eliminating these questions from the American Community Survey," W. Bradford Wilcox, associate professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at University of Virginia, said. "They are helpful in painting an accurate statistical portrait of American family life. Losing them would be a tragedy."
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