Tag: U.S. Census

The Census Can Count Households But Struggles to See Fathers

The Census Bureau has demonstrated that complicated family relationships can be measured when we decide they are worth measuring.

But America has spent decades making enormous policy decisions about fathers while too often measuring fathers indirectly through mothers, households, child support cases, marriage records, birth certificates, or children’s primary addresses. These data sources are valuable. But none, standing alone, constitutes a full measure of fatherhood.

We don’t believe there’s a shortage of fathers in the data; we believe there’s a shortage of questions capable of describing them.