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Delay in Presenting Data Brings
Attention to Program on
Infants
An article in the November 13th issue of The New York Times reports that the Clinton Administration cancelled a presentation of preliminary data suggesting that an ambitious Federal program to reduce infant mortality had fallen far short of its goals. The data were collected for an evaluation of the Healthy Start program, which was started by the Bush Administration. The program gives $100 million a year to 60 cities and counties with high mortality rates, in an effort to reduce the infant mortality rate by 50%.
The data were to have been presented at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting on November 13th, Administration officials confirmed. The reason the data were witheld is because the Administration felt the data were incomplete. Mathematica Policy research, a social science recearch center located in Princeton, N.J., is evaluating the Healthy Start program under a $4.8 million Federal contract. The data, for 1994, come from 9 of 16 sites included in the evaluation. The Administration not only feels that data are incomplete but maintains that, because the Healthy Start program was just getting started in 1994, the data are unreliable. The report was written by senior Times staff writer Robert Pear and appears on page A15.
Tenatative Pact Will Allow Census
Bureau to Test Sampling
According to reports on November 1st in The New York Times and other newspapers, the U.S.Congress and the Clinton Administration have reached a tentative agreement that would allow the U.S. Census Bureau to test statistical sampling. The deal would allow the Bureau to use statistical sampling methods designed for the 2000 census in two dress rehearsals to be conducted next Spring. One of the dress rehearsal censuses will be conducted in Sacramento, the other in a rural area in and around Columbia, S.C.
The Sacramento test census will make extensive use of the Bureau's sampling procedures for the 2000 census. The Bureau will use more traditional methods in South Carolina, and will use more advertising, more mailings of census forms, and more enumerators for follow-up activities. The South Carolina test census will be an augmented version of the Bureau's 1990 census procedures.
According to the deal reached between the White House and Congress, the Clinton Administration will agree to speeding up a U.S. Supreme Court review of statistical sampling. If the Supreme Court overturns the Bureau's sampling plans, the Bureau will use traditional census procedures in 2000. Because Republicans are concerned that the Clinton Administration will use sampling to manipulate population counts, the agreement also calls for an independent panel to oversee the 2000 census. The Times article was written by Stephen Holmes and appears on page A12.