California Census Research Data Center

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9812173 Brady This is a collaborative proposal from UC Berkeley and UCLA to establish the California Census Research Data Center ("CCRDC" or "California CRDC") in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The CCRDC consists of two secure sites or laboratories, one at UCLA and the other at UC Berkeley. There is a substantial community of social scientists located on the West Coast who have either developed or would like to develop research projects that would make use of microdata from the Census Bureau's economic surveys of business establishments and firms or from its demographic surveys of households and individuals. By establishing this Research Data Center (RDC), the locational disadvantage currently confronting a large and distinguished group of social science researchers on the West Coast will be reduced. By reducing the costs of conducting research, we project that a large number of important and high quality research projects utilizing micro-level data from Census surveys will be stimulated on a wide range of important basic research and policy-relevant issues. Moreover, by establishing a partnership with the California CRDC, the Census Bureau will have the opportunity to exploit the size and diversity of California and to capitalize on existing efforts by the state to develop other data sources from administrative records. These administrative data have the potential, when linked with Census data, to open up unique and path-breaking lines of research. The two laboratories, one at UCLA and one at UC Berkeley, will be developed and operated under one unified Center. The Center will have a common governance structure, Executive Director, and Review Board that will work with the Census Bureau to provide fair and objective access to West Coast researchers while at the same time protecting the confidentiality of the underlying microdata. In particular, the principal and co-principal investigators, an Executive Director, and the Review Board for the CCRDC will work to instill the "culture of confidentiality" at both laboratories. Over its first three years, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of California's California Policy Seminar will fund the CCRDC. Funding also is requested from the National Science Foundation over this same 3-year period to help defray some of the Center's costs. Commitments from these sources will enable the Center to support two Faculty Research Coordinators, an Executive Director, and a Census Bureau employee at each laboratory and to create a reliable computing and security environment. With this staff and infrastructure, it should be possible for the Center to develop a sufficient portfolio of funded research projects, paying reasonable user fees for the laboratories, to be financially self-sufficient by the end of a three to five year period.