StatAb Lovers: A Must Read

Multiple posts on the Statistical Abstract have appeared on this blog—and are referenced from oldest to most recent below. Yesterday I saw one on Patio Boat that rightly belongs into this series and is a must read for those who follow this saga. Here is the link.

Those here are, in order: one, two, three, and four.

StatAb Redux

To tell you the truth, I hate that word, redux, but anything for a snappy title. Still, while I’m at it, the word has its origins in the Latin ducere, to “bring or to lead” which, prefaced by re-, meaning back, means “to bring back”; hence redux means “brought back.”

The collective “we” around here mourned the passing of the Statistical Abstract severally and acrimoniously, and to find those laments we recommend using the Categories on your left. Now comes word that the StatAb will, after all, appear again in 2013, thus the silver cord will not have been broken, but a transmogrification of some kind will have taken place. The next edition will be produced by the private sector, specifically by ProQuest. Now ProQuest is a neighbor around here, headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI; that pleases others of us who function as publishers in this state. Our collective “we” have already bought our first copy in advance, although the pain was rather sharp as the price, ouch, was $179. Librarians all over will be happy—although they, too, will wince at the price in these days of diminishing budgets.

Whether or not our joy will be mixed or expansive all depends on whether the new StatAb will be like the old one, permitting full use of its tabular materials—or whether it will be surrounded by a thick veil of copyright protection. We hope for the former, not the latter. The new StatAb, like the old, will, no doubt, be filled with government-collected data. We pay for that collecion with our taxes—and would hate to pay for them, again. In any case, good luck, ProQuest. Get it right and you will have heaps of praise piled on you by us and others—and we won’t again murmur about the price.

The StatAb Is Dead, Long Live the StatAb

The Statistical Abstract of the United States (1878-2011) is now officially dead. We’ve managed 131 editions of this book. We’ve managed to produce it right through World War I, the Depression, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and on—until now budget cuts have killed it. Here is the official announcement from the Census Bureau (link):

The U.S. Census Bureau is terminating the collection of data for the Statistical Compendia program effective October 1, 2011. The Statistical Compendium program is comprised of the Statistical Abstract of the United States and its supplemental products — the State and Metropolitan Area Data Book and the County and City Data Book. In preparation for the Fiscal Year 2012 (FY 2012) budget, the Census Bureau did a comprehensive review of a number of programs and had to make difficult proposals to terminate and reduce a number of existing programs in order to acquire funds for higher priority programs. The decision to propose the elimination of this program was not made lightly. To access the most current data, please refer to the organizations cited in the source notes for each table of the Statistical Abstract.

Never mind. Long live the StatAb. The spirit it represented is still alive and well. It was an effort to empower a well-informed citizenry with straight facts—straight from their own Census Bureau—with lots of help from other stellar statistical agencies of the United States government. Those people are still there, although diminished in numbers. We salute and join you in bowing our heads. The StatAb Shall Rise Again!

Statistical Abstract: How Many Copies Are Sold?

The one statistic you won’t find in the Statistical Abstract of the United States is the number of copies of that publication actually sold. The Statistical Abstract is much-loved by data mavens; and what I discovered is that their number is tiny.

The book is physically published and distributed by the Government Printing Office. The GPO also proudly lists the Stat Ab as one its best sellers. Indeed it ranks third of the top twenty five. The top three are Your Federal Income Tax for Individuals 2010, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, and the Statistical Abstract, 2011. But GPO’s own bragging list doesn’t offer any numbers.

I bent myself into a pretzel and, finally, did manage to find an answer of sorts in a draft document put on the web by the GPO itself. The document is part of some sort of report to Congress, I think. Here I found some numbers of the 2004/2005 FY sales of that book by the GPO. Mind you, the Stat Ab is also sold as a CD, but I couldn’t find anything on CD sales of the product. And since the rise of the Internet, most people, I would say, use the electronic versions of the book readily available there. But those who would axe the Stat Ab will point to the figures I am about to unveil. Herewith the data for 2004/2005:

Paperback version: 2,189
Cloth version: 1,135
Standing orders for paperback: 473
Standing orders for cloth: 670

The unimpressive total—at least from a commercial point of view—is therefore 3,324.

Now the American Library Association tells me (here) that there are 122,101 libraries in the United States. Of these 9,221 are public libraries. If all of GPO’s copies are bought by public libraries, just over a third bother to buy it. But it’s not only libraries that buy it. At my old alma mater, Editorial Code and Data, Inc., we bought and still buy a paper copy, although in practice we use the CD. But the only visible political support for the publication of this book appears to come from librarians. The elites among them, I would guess.

What I’ve gotten out of this painful experience—the threat to the good old Stat Ab—is a realization of the size of the community committed to preserve and maintain the statistical lens by which we see the otherwise invisible (because they are too huge) structures of modernity.

Changing News Habits

Talking of the Statistical Abstract, I chanced across its Table 1134 the other day in the 2011 edition accessible here. It brings us information on newspapers from the year book of Editor & Publisher going back to 1970. I’ve indexed circulation and U.S. population for the period 1970-2000 using the provided decade and one 5-year intervals, and then annually from 2002 through 2008. Both U.S. population and daily newspaper circulation are indexed at 100 in 1970 and then the changes indicated from that year forward. In 1970 circulation stood at 62.1 million daily; our population was 205 million. In 2008 circulation had dropped to 48.6 million, population had increased to 304 million.

Our habits are changing. To tell the truth, exactly what it means is anybody’s guess. Some people who no longer get the paper, still read it on electronic devices. Others who still get the paper—as we get the Detroit News—don’t read the damned thing. It usually sits on a chair still in its red plastic wrapper, sometimes for days on end—unless some necessary shopping causes Brigitte to find relevant ads. We don’t read it because its ink-to-information ratio has radically changed. We still read the New York Times, and daily. But many millions of others get their awareness of the news from radio, television, the Internet, and their cell phones.

I don’t read gloom and doom into the drop, drop, drop, the Chinese water torture our old print media now suffer. I never actually believed in the presence of a vast, well-informed, and highly responsible citizenry trembling with eagerness to do good. Responsible elites are always very small. To get a kind of indication of that, take a look at next post. There you will learn something about the circulation of the Statistical Abstract itself.

Save the Statistical Abstract

Very disturbing news came to me by way of an observant former colleague. She pointed me to this site. It reports that the Obama Administration has evidently decided to nix the Statistical Abstract. The request to kill one of the oldest products of the Bureau, and one most used by the public, is in black-and-white in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Budget Estimates, presented to Congress, for Fiscal Year 2012. Do you want to read the words? Okay. Here is the text itself (pages 79-80), and here is what it says (FTE stands for full-time employees):

1. Terminate Statistical Abstract (Base Funding 24 FTE and $2.9 million; Program Change minus 24 FTE and minus $2.9 million):The Census Bureau requests a decrease to terminate the Statistical Abstract program. The FY 2012 budget request is the result of a review of both ongoing and cyclical programs necessary to achieve Department of Commerce and Census Bureau goals and difficult choices had to be made in balancing program needs and fiscal constraints. The availability elsewhere of much of the information in the statistical abstract has led the Department and Census Bureau to the difficult decision to terminate the program.

I have often asserted on LaMarotte, emphatically, indeed with passion, that the statistical functions of the Federal Government—the very best in the world, believe me—are the eyes through which we see. The Statistical Abstract of the United States, to be sure, is an aggregation of data made available to the public, thus the citizenry, and doing away with it does not, automatically, also nix the functionalities that produce the original data professionally and thoughtfully assembled by those 24 FTEs. Wow! We can afford to expend $300 million a day on the war in Afghanistan but we can’t afford $2.9 million a year to produce a publication that we have been producing since 1878? The Stat Ab in 2011 is in its 130th edition!

We’ve managed to publish the Statistical Abstract right through World War I, the Depression, World War II, the Korean Conflict, and Vietnam—and now, suddenly, because a bunch of financial speculators majorly screwed up our financial markets—now, suddenly, we have to furlough 24 people and shed $2.9 million? Give. Me. A. Break!

Even when people lose their jobs and then break their eyeglasses, they do order new ones. We can’t mess with the lens by which we see the world. Save the Stat Ab, you blundering idiots—or surely I’ll—well, impotence is great when you live down here in the so-called real world. But I’ll think of something.

Added Later: Commenter Joyce Simkin left a link to Change.org where you, too, can sign a petition in support of saving the Statistical Abstract. Unfortunately the link she left does not work. It is HERE in proper working order.