Trust and transparency in government data

Speaking of the BLS, economist David Wessel joins Jonathan Schwabish on the PolicyViz podcast to discuss the current state of the economy and the reliability of data coming from statistical agencies. There’s a brief lesson in there about where the data comes from, its importance, and how it affects us at the community level. For example:

And I don’t think people generally understand how much of the social programs we have are influenced by the research that people have done before. I mean, just take for an example, the Earned Income Tax Credit.

It’s one of our biggest anti-poverty programs. It’s a bonus that we pay low-wage workers. And it has survived in part because there’s good data on what effect it this has on people’s willingness to work or the well-being of their children and stuff like that.

So without good data to fund to that honest researchers can do, and sometimes we’ll discover some programs don’t work and we can get rid of them, we’ll be driving blind.

Some people probably prefer that we drive blind so they can point us in the direction that they want to go. But that doesn’t seem like the right direction.