The Population Census in Brazil and the US: Importance, Challenges, and Confidentiality

Date: 

Wednesday, October 27, 2021, 12:00pm to 1:15pm


This event is virtual, to register click here.

Speakers: John Abowd, Associate Director for Research and Methodology and Chief Scientist, United States Census Bureau; Eduardo Rios Neto, President, Brazilian National Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)
Moderated by: Marcia Castro, Andelot Professor of Demography; Chair, Department of Global Health and Population, HSPH; Chair, Brazil Studies Program

John Abowd is the U.S. Census Bureau’s associate director for research and methodology, and chief scientist. He was named to the position in June 2016. The Research and Methodology Directorate leads critical work to modernize our operations and products. He is leading the agency’s efforts to create a differentially private disclosure avoidance system for the 2020 Census and future data products. His long association with the Census Bureau began in 1998 when he joined the team that helped found the longitudinal employer-household dynamics program. In 2008, he led the team that created the world’s first application of a differentially private data protection system for the program’s OnTheMap job location tool. Abowd is also the Edmund Ezra Day Professor emeritus of economics, statistics, and data science at Cornell University. He is a fellow and past president of the Society of Labor Economists. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, and Econometric Society, as well as an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and A.B. in economics from the University of Notre Dame.

Eduardo Rios-Neto is the IBGE Brazilian National Institute of Geography and Statistics’ president, starting April 2021. Former Director of Surveys at IBGE, from May 2019 until March 2021. Member of Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Distinguished Lemann Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign during the 2015-2016 academic year. He was retired in 2015 as Full Professor of Demography at CEDEPLAR-Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), where he has taught since 1980. He received the Brazilian Federal Government Medal of Scientific Merit in 2010. He was Graduate Training Director in Demography at CEDEPLAR between 1996 and 2000. He was Tinker Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the first semester of 2006, when he taught a course o policy impact evaluation in Latin America. In 1996, he spent one year in Postdoctoral activities in Demography at the University of Texas, Austin, when he finished his full professor’s thesis. He has a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of California at Berkeley. His M.A. and B.A. degrees are in Economics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais - Brazil. He was President of the Brazilian Population Association (ABEP) from 1999-2002. He was a member of the Brazilian National Committee on Population and Development (CNPD) and eventually became the president of CNPD, 2004-2011. He was a member of the social and economic development council for the state of Minas Gerais. He was a member of the Brazilian National Research Council’s (CNPq) advisory committee for two years. He has coordinated several institutional research grants at Cedeplar. These grants were in education, impact evaluation of the conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Familia, Impact evaluation of education and social programs in the state of Minas Gerais. He participated in some “Expert Meetings” for the United Nations and other international scientific organizations. In addition, he has been a fellow at the Ford Foundation, CNPqBrazilian National Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Population Council. He was the vice chair of the bureau organizing the Commission on Population and Development of the United Nation´s Economic and Social Council in 2010. In 2014, he was a committee member to evaluate IIASA – International Institute for Applied System Analysis. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the IPUMSInternational dissemination project, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota. He has published national and international papers as well as two books and several book chapters.

Marcia Castro is Andelot Professor of Demography, and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, associate faculty of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and faculty member of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Her research focuses on the development and use of multidisciplinary approaches, combining data from different sources, to identify the determinants of malaria transmission in different ecological settings, and to provide evidence for the improvement of current control policies, and the development of new ones. She has more than 20 years of research experience in the Brazilian Amazon, and is assessing the role of extreme weather events on malaria. She has projects on dengue, Zika virus, chikungunya, tuberculosis, congenital syphilis, and infant and child mortality and development. Professor Castro received the 2018 Roger L. Nichols Award for Excellence in Teaching. She earned her doctoral degree in Demography from Princeton University.

Presented in collaboration with the Department of Global Health and Population and the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs