Encyclopedia of the U.S. Census represents a unique and definitive collaboration among more than 80 leading experts on all aspects of the U.S. Census. Drawing from academia, government, and the private sector, CQ Press and the editorial board have commissioned more than 100 concise, definitive articles on the decennial census and related topics.

Subjects covered include:

• Content of the census. What the census tracks, and when it began to ask specific questions; how questions are formulated, and factors that affect which questions are asked; other types of censuses (housing, economic, and agricultural).
• Procedure. How the census is planned, advertised, and conducted; state and local involvement; how results are tabulated and stored.
• Uses of the census. Publications, databases, and electronic products that provide census information for statistical and demographic research; archiving of census records and genealogical use of census schedules.
• Census history. Census taking in America from colonial times to the present and at each census; population trends over time, including changes in family composition; racial and ethnic groups; and the social, economic, and educational status of the population.
• Politics of the census. Effect of census data on congressional districts and funding of federal programs; controversies: from slavery and the three-fifths compromise in 1790, to the use of statistical sampling in 2000.

Other features include a 16-page photo collection that visually shows the census evolution, and an extensive glossary of terms. An appendix of useful information and a detailed index round out the volume. Most articles include references for further reading; many also point the reader to online resources for census information.

"This resource should be on all public and academic library ready-reference shelves."

Margo J. Anderson specializes in the social history of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With Stephen E. Fienberg she recently published Who Counts? The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America (1999). She is also the author of The American Census: A Social History (1988) and The United States Census and Labor Force Change (1980) as well as the coeditor with Maurine Greenwald of Pittsburgh Surveyed (1996). Anderson teaches women's history and quantitative methods for historians and is working on a history of statistics and the formation of American social policy. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, serves as the chair of the Council of the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, and has served as chair of the History Department and of the Executive Committee of the Faculty at the Uiversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Rutgers University.

CQ Researcher Bound Volume 2007

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