Because We Need Good Data to Predict the Future

Where do you live? How old are you? Did you finish college? Are you married? Do you have any children? Have you recently moved? What type of job do you have? These may seem like mundane questions, but to demographers the answers yield data that are critical to understanding today’s society and predicting the future.

For 95 years, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) has used demographic data to help people make informed decisions that affect communities around the world. PRB works in partnership with the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Centers to make population research accessible to a broad audience.

Just as roads and bridges are fundamental to our physical infrastructure, demographic information is vital to our data and policy infrastructure. Demography provides a lens that community leaders, policymakers, business leaders, advocates, and residents can use to allocate resources effectively and plan for a thriving future.

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Because It Can Strengthen Communities

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, we are reminded that Americans are deeply polarized. But while the term “polarization” is widely used, with apologies to The Princess Bride, that word does not always mean what you think it means. The American public is not polarized in the sense that they are divided into two ideological camps with little middle ground (although that is the case for our politicians). Rather, they experience affective polarization, which refers not to their views on public policy—as Americans are generally centrists—but instead a personal dislike of people who support the “other” party. This is a relatively recent development, for as recently as the 1980s, partisan differences did not usually translate to personal antipathy. Nor is it limited to one party; Republicans and Democrats express nearly identical dislike of each another.

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Because It Might Help Us Save American Democracy

Healthy democratic systems feature competing visions of a good society, and that competition can be beneficial for society as a whole. At the same time, democracies require tolerance, trust, and cooperation to avoid the kind of toxic polarization that puts democracy itself at risk. Increasingly, the extent of affective polarization threatens American democracy. Different social groups (such as liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans) not only differ and disagree with one another but also come to deeply dislike and derogate one another.

Before turning to the question of what can be done to curb destructive forms of polarization, it is necessary to understand the ways in which liberal-leftists and conservative-rightists differ from one another. More than 20 years of research in political psychology finds that liberal-leftists and conservative-rightists differ in many ways when it comes to attitudes, values, personality characteristics—including authoritarianism and social dominance orientation—and system justification tendencies. For example, there is a significant divide over the values of equality and tradition. As people become more and more conservative, they value tradition more and equality less, and as people become more and more liberal, they value tradition less and equality more. Research carried out all over the world shows that leftists prioritize harmony, benevolence, and universalism, whereas rightists prioritize power, conformity, security, tradition, and self-interest (read more).

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Because It Makes Informed Democracy Possible

Einstein said famously, “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” It gives scientific optimists like me encouragement that great thinkers have concluded it is possible to understand the world, that the world is not chaotic, senseless, and inscrutable. In the empirical world there is a means for determining which of two ideas, explanations, or choices is more likely to be true. Through observation, experiment, and analysis there is a path to reliable knowledge. By going down that path we can gain knowledge that is more and more reliable. If only more people realized this! This is not only, as in Einstein’s words, mysterious that it should be so; it is also astounding. And this is comforting, because it also appears to be true that with reliable knowledge one can improve the human condition, reduce suffering and affliction, and ennoble human life. This is the testament of science. Science, the greatest intellectual development of the past half millennium, brings many material advances, but the greatest gift of science is the idea of science itself.

I suppose some would say I am going off the deep end in idle philosophy, but it seems to me very empowering in a practical sense to know how useful the well-developed practices and standards of science (social science and the scientific techniques of other disciplines) are for resolving many differences of opinion. How very empowering it is to know that there can be and is progress toward a self-consistent and improving understanding of people and things.

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Because It Produces Essential Data for Our Democracy

The social sciences are vitally important to the institutions of democracy. Those institutions include a constellation of federal statistical agencies responsible for collecting and disseminating data. With these data, critical decisions are made such as where to build schools and fire stations, how to shape congressional districts, and the way more than $600 billion in federal funds are allocated.

Consider just one such agency, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, responsible along with the FBI, and various other federal agencies, for generating national crime statistics. With these data, law enforcement officials at the state and local levels make informed assessments of the prevalence and frequency of crimes in their areas. Social scientists, such as criminologists, sociologists and others, go a huge step further. They use the same data to discern patterns of criminal behavior thereby facilitating more effective policing and crime intervention methods. They also are best positioned to create data-supported analyses about what types of crimes are occurring, where, and in relation to other considerations such as social, political, and economic factors. They also detect when justice may not have been consistently and fairly applied.  The result is a more comprehensive and holistic approach to crime prevention and mitigation.

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Because Social Science Makes Sense of the Institutions That Shape Our Lives

Throughout my career as a professor of public policy, public administration, and political science, I have been convinced of the value of social science, especially political science. For more than three decades my research has focused on the role nonprofit organizations play in public policy. This research is grounded in expanding our understanding of the relationship between government and nonprofits, including developing effective strategies for collaboration and partnership in support of innovation and social impact.

Since my appointment as Executive Director of the American Political Science Association in August 2013, I have been committed to broadening and deepening the impact of political science research in the advancement of knowledge. Indeed, social science research is fundamental to understanding—and making the best of—the world around us. As I work with our political scientist members, I have been impressed with the tremendous diversity of important research projects now underway, including why people vote, why states go to war (proven prevention techniques), effective strategies to teach citizenship in local communities, and improving the provision of public services. Overall, it is impossible to ignore the myriad ways in which social science helps us understand, create, and engage with the institutions that shape our lives.

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