Science - USA (2020-02-07)

634 7 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6478 sciencemag.org SCIENCE

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I

n his new book, The Uncounted, Alex

Cobham documents how shortcomings

of data in two key areas—population

and finances—work together to exclude

certain groups from exerting political

power while simultane-

ously conveying greater political

power to other groups. Cobham,

an economist and the chief exec-

utive at the Tax Justice Network

in the United Kingdom, focuses

on the extent to which many

marginalized populations are

often not counted in official sta-

tistics and the extent to which

wealthy individuals and fami-

lies are often able to hide their

financial resources, properties, and other

holdings from the government to avoid

paying taxes on these assets.

Cobham documents a range of situations

where people are missed or undercounted

in official statistics, from United Nations fig-

ures to country surveys. More often than not,

the most frequently missed groups are those

that are economically and socially marginal-

ized. When such groups are not accounted

for, it often leads to reduced political power

as well as reduced economic well-being.

Many marginalized groups have rela-

tively high net undercount rates in the U.S.

census ( 1 ), and areas with high concentra-

tions of these groups often do

not receive their fair share of

government aid. In addition to

those noted by Cobham, there

is another group that is regu-

larly undercounted in censuses:

young children ( 2 – 4 ).

These examples support Cob-

ham’s observation that “there

may be people and groups at the

bottom of distributions (e.g., in-

come) whose ‘uncounting’ adds

another level to their marginalization.” He

goes on: “Being uncounted is not gener-

ally a matter of coincidence, but reflects

power: the lack of it, or its excess.”

The political overtones of how power

can be used to deliberately undercount

marginalized groups was on full display in

the buildup to the 2020 U.S. census. The

Trump administration, acting through

the U.S. Department of Commerce, tried

to add a question to the 2020 U.S. census

regarding citizenship status, knowing that

it would depress participation of popula-

tions with large numbers of immigrants.

This attempt—which was eventually struck

down by the U.S. Supreme Court but was

then the subject of an executive order with

similar goals—was made despite the objec-

tions of the experts at the Census Bureau,

all living former Census Bureau directors,

and many other statistical experts.

Cobham next turns his attention to un-

counted money and the extent to which

people can hide their resources from the

authorities. Hidden resources not only de-

prive countries of their fair share of tax

revenue, they mask the real extent of eco-

nomic inequality.

Here, Cobham documents efforts cur-

rently under way to make the financial

world more transparent. While such ef-

forts are still young, they appear to be hav-

ing mixed success. He writes, for example,

about the shortcomings of the commonly

used Gini coefficient to measure income

inequality, which is insensitive at higher

levels of inequality, and the benefits of the

more transparent Palma method, which

can easily be translated into a meaningful

statement for nonexpert audiences.

Throughout the book, Cobham argues

that a lack of good data on population and

finances is a major hindrance to good gov-

ernance. Without good data, he maintains,

we have little idea if a policy or program is

having a positive or negative impact.

In his “Uncounted Manifesto” at the

end of the book, Cobham makes the case

for several changes in law and regulations

that could help us get a more accurate as-

sessment of populations and resources

that currently go uncounted. Here, he

highlights the promise of the international

standard known as the Extractive Indus-

tries Transparency Initiative, set up to

make sure multinational corporations are

paying their fair share of taxes. Initially

lacking in accountability, the initiative has

evolved into a metric with “powerful mo-

mentum to pursue real transparency.”

Ultimately, The Uncounted provides a

good summary and overview of the extent

to which official statistics are systemati-

cally biased because of uncounted popula-

tions and hidden financial resources. The

book will provide a good entry point for

people interested in the interplay between

data, demography, and public policy. j

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. W. P. O’Hare, Differential Undercounts in the U.S. Census:
   Who Is Missed? (Springer, 2019).


2. W. P. O’Hare, The Undercount of Young Children in the
   U.S. Decennial Census (Springer, 2015).


3. W. P. O’Hare, Stat. J. IAOS 33 , 289 (2017).


4. D. Goodkind, Demography 48 , 291 (2011).
   10.1126/science.aba0447

DEMOGRAPHY

ByWilliam P. O’Hare

Hidden figures

Missing population data hinder good accounting

and fair resource distribution

U.S. census workers set out to count individuals experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, California.

INSIGHTS | BOOKS

The reviewer is president of O’Hare Data and

Demographic Services, LLC, Cape Charles, VA 23310, USA.

Email: [email protected]

The Uncounted

Alex Cobham

Polity, 2020. 240 pp.

Published by AAAS