Governmental Statistics—An Example of State-Federal Cooperation

Abstract

Intergovernmental cooperation in the collection of statistics on economic and social conditions presents an interesting problem because of the need for uniformity in the various segments of a statistical survey. This subject has not, however, been discussed, except incidentally, in any of the many studies of the changing roles of state and federal governments. In many programs flexibility, the capacity to adapt to varying local conditions, is presented as a major advantage of federal-state cooperation and particularly of grant-in-aid programs. The very essence of accurate statistics, however, is uniformity of concept, methodology and product in the various parts of a system. Once it is recognized that a number of major statistical programs are carried out through cooperative action, questions about the desirability of cooperation and the reasons for it arise, since it appears that the flexibility which is an advantage in other programs would be a dangerous weakness in these. This article reviews the development of one of the larger cooperative statistical programs and, in the process, attempts to throw some light on the reasons for the success of cooperation in that program and the conditions under which it is likely to be satisfactory in other programs. Economic and social statistics, or interpretations of them, are frequently referred to; they are an important factor in political and economic decisions and programs. but little attention is customarily paid to the way in which they are obtained. The scope and accuracy of the statistics which describe our economy, the majority of which are prepared by government agencies, have grown enormously in the last generation, which has also seen some important changes in the relations between our national and state governments. These changing patterns have impinged and, in consequence, a substantial share of our current economic statistics is collected through some arrangement by which the national and state governments cooperate in order to increase the quantity of comparable statistics and reduce the number of requests for information addressed to putative respondents in statistical surveys. There is a great diversity in the subject matter of these cooperative surveys. The Department of Agriculture uses them in collecting information on the acreage and production of crops and the number of livestock on farms. The Bureau of Mines conducts surveys of mineral production and accidents to miners. The Office of Education helps states to improve their own statistics on education. The National Vital Statistics Division secures data on births and deaths throughout the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics prepares current monthly estimates of employment, hours of work, earnings, and labor turnover for several hundred industries and these are comparable with the estimates for each state and 140 metropolitan areas which are prepared by cooperating states. Each of the sets of statistics mentioned has its own audience of business analysts, legislators, public health services, school systems, economists, and public adininistrators. They are factors in the development of public policy and legislation at all levels of government and frequently contribute to business decisions and to the climate of public opinion on various issues. These statistical systems are of quite different types in a technical sense. In some cases they are based on samples, in others reports are obtained for each unit in the universe of events being studied; some depend almost entirely on mailed questionnaires, others on interviews; some measure changes in a continuum through time, others count discrete events; some are based on voluntary responses to requests for information, others on the tabluation of reports required by law for various purposes. The common thread running through them is cooperation between state and national agencies. This cooperation itself takes various forms, ranging from a simple exchange of the basic data collected to highly integrated systems. It may involve technical or financial assistance by the national government, which may be provided in one of a number of ways.