Geographic Spines in the 2020 Census Disclosure Avoidance System

arXiv:2203.16654v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: The 2020 Census Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) is a formally private mechanism that first adds independent noise to cross tabulations for a set of pre-specified hierarchical geographic units, which is known as the geographic spine. After post-processing these noisy measurements, DAS outputs a formally private database with fields indicating location in the standard census geographic spine, which is defined by the United States as a whole, states, counties, census tracts, block groups, and census blocks. …

arxiv census cs.cr database disclosure mechanism noise noisy private system