Why He Matters:
As the associate director for Demographic Programs at the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., Howard Hogan leads programs that provide demographic, social and economic data about the nation’s population and households. “I got interested in doing population studies and population statistics. You look for good places to do it and this is one of them,” said Hogan about the U.S. Census Bureau.
Howard Hogan, associate director at the U.S. Census Bureau
He oversees household, crime and health surveys and even helped produce the official poverty estimate for the U.S. population projections. He is responsible for the International Programs Center, the Population Division, the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, the Demographic Statistical Methods Division and the Data Integration Division. He made significant advances in measuring the small area estimation of poverty, in the production of population estimates, in developing special techniques to estimate the demographic impact of the Gulf hurricanes, and in the use of administrative records for statistical estimation. Hogan established himself as a leader in the production of social statistics.
“We actually take the Census and compute how many congressmen each state gets. We work on defining how we measure race in America. We work on defining how poverty is measured in America. How housing quality is measured. We have a really exciting national program,” Hogan said. “One thing we did, we have a program that was experimental where we take satellite images of foreign countries and their actual census data and according to a statistical model we find out where people live.”
This program experimented with tracking of Haitians after the 2010 earthquake., he Hogan’s group had data running on their website for aid agencies like The State Department and The Coast Guard. “Every aid agency was using our website to know exactly where the people were,” he said.
Outside the U.S. Census Bureau, Hogan is an adjunct professor at George Washington University for the Department of Statistics teaching survey sampling. He was also an instructor for the Washington Statistical Society teaching a two-day course on “Exploratory Data Analysis Using S-Plus,” an instructor at USDA’s Graduate School teaching courses on data analysis and demography and a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina for the Department of Biostatistics evaluating a family planning reach project in Bangladesh on behalf of the Agency for International Development.
Although Hogan says his job also consists of “A bunch of meetings, a bunch of emails, occasionally running downtown and talking to a congressman and juggling with a lot of other federal agencies,” he is an integral figure within the U.S. Census Bureau.
Hogan has received professional recognition from the Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2001 for his contributions to the Decennial Census. He is a chairman of the Survey Research Methods Section with the American Statistical Association, was a member for three years of the Committee on Populations Statistics for the Population Association of America, is a country representative of the International Association of Survey Statisticians, was a chair of the Organizing Committee for the International Conference on Establishment Surveys from 2005 to 2007, a program chair for the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association in 2003, a secretary of the Julius Shiskin Award Committee from 1993 to 2002, a chairman of the Nominating Committee for the International Association of Survey Statisticians in 1994 and a representative at large for the Washington Statistical Society from 1993 to 1996.
Path to Power:
When Hogan started with the U.S. Census Bureau in 1979, he was a principal researcher for the Statistical Research Division for about four years. He helped develop alternative methods to measure the number of people missed in censuses and surveys, and conducted three statistical projects including an administrative records match and a longitudinal tracing study. He also evaluated the population statistics system in Mauritius and advised the Government of Morocco on census evaluation methods, designing a coverage measurement survey, and aided with the testing and development, with all consulting work conducted in French.
Hogan moved up to chief of Undercount Research Staff for the Statistical Research Division in 1983, leading the Census Bureau’s effort to research, develop and implement methods to correct the 1990 Census for undercount. This program included developing a research plan to address all issues concerning coverage measurement and adjustment for the 1990 Census. He designed and managed a large survey, the 1990 Post-Enumeration Survey, including a questionnaire design, processing plan, a matching process design, imputation, post-stratification plan, estimation design and census adjustment. He also developed methods to measure uncertainty in demographic analysis population estimates. He was consulted by statistical offices in Sweden, the United Kingdom and India to give legal depositions in federal litigation.
In 1993, Hogan became the assistant division chief of research and methodology for the Business Division at the U.S. Census where he applied statistical principles and methods to the Census Bureau’s surveys of retail trade, wholesale trade, service industries and transportation. His team developed new estimation methods for transportation surveys, revised the sample design for retail and wholesale surveys and improved sampling processes.
As chief of decennial statistical studies division of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001, Hogan led a group responsible for the statistical design of the Decennial Census -including statistical quality control design, coverage improvement activities, software quality control, content sampling, undercount measurement and census adjustment. He also assisted three U.S. Solicitors General and provided testimony cited in Supreme Court Case: Utah v. Evans, an event Hogan is most proud of.
In 2002, Hogan became the chief of the Economic Statistical Methods and Programming Division where he managed the development of software for the Census Bureau’s economic programs which included monthly indicator surveys, annual surveys, and the economic census.
Before coming to Washington, D.C. he worked for two years in Africa on the Tanzanian Census and before that he was a graduate student at Princeton University studying Economics and Demography, earning a master’s and a Ph.D. Hogan also has an Master in Public Affairs from The Woodrow Wilson School. He earned a bachelor’s in Economics and Mathematics from Pomona College and earned a certificate in Economics while studying abroad at Stockholm University.
In 1978, Hogan was a visiting research associate at MacQuaire University in North Ryde, Australia for the Department of Statistics conducting research into standard mortality tables. Before that, he was the head of the demographic unit at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, teaching courses in demography and publishing articles on demography in Tanzania. He was also the demographic advisor to the 1978 Census of Population and Housing.
An avid traveler, Hogan has lived in the United States, Brazil, India, Tanzania, Sweden, Australia and Morocco. He speaks French, Swedish, conversational Portuguese and a few words of Swahili.
Selected Papers and Publications:
“Measurement of Race and Ethnicity in a Changing, Multicultural America,” Journal of Race and Social Problems, DOT 10.1007/S12552-009-9011-5, with Karen Humes (2009)
“Measuring Population Change Using the American Community Survey,” Applied Demography in the 21st Century, S.Murdock and D. Swanson (eds), The Netherlands: Springer Publications, 13-30 (2008)
“The Use of Statistical Methods in the U.S. Census,” The American Statistician, August 2004, Vol. 58, No. 3, pp 1-10, with Patrick Cantwell and Kathleen Styles (2004)
“Software Process Improvement Efforts at the U.S. Bureau, Experience of the Economic Directorate,” Survey and Statistical Computing IV: The Impact of Technology on the Survey Process, edited by R.Banks et al, 2003 Association for Survey Computing, with Ellen Soper (2003)
“The Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation: Theory and Design,” Survey Methodology, December 2003, vol. 29 no. 02 (2003)
“The Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation,” in Encyclopedia of the U.S. Census, Margo Anderson, Ed., CQ Press, Washington, D.C. (2000)
“Census 2000: Evolution of the Revised Plan,” Chance, Vol 12, No. 4, with Tommy Wright (1999)
“How Exploratory Data Analysis is Improving the Way We Collect Business Statistics,” Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods, American Statistical Association, 102-107 (1995)
“Examining the Revisions in Monthly Trade Surveys Under a Rotating Panel Design,” Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods, American Statistical Association, 567-572, with P. Cantwell, C. Caldwell, and C. Konschnik (1995)
“The 1990 Post Enumeration Survey: Operations and Results,” The Journal of the American Statistical Association, 88:423, 1047-1060
“Measuring Accuracy in Post-Enumeration Surveys,” Survey Methodology, 14;1, 99-116, with Kirk Wolter (1988)
“Considerations Sur L’Evaluation du Recensement General de la Population et de l’Habitat du Maroc de 1982,” Proceedings of the 43rd Session of the International Statistical Institute, Vol. XLIX, 1600-1612, Invited Paper, with A. El ghazali (1981)
The Demography of Tanzania, Population Council, New York and BRALUP, Dar es Salaam, with R. Henin and D. Ewbank (1977)