Biography of Dr. Kenneth Prewitt
Dr. Kenneth Prewitt has been Director of the United States
Census Bureau since October 21, 1998. Nominated by the President, he was unanimously confirmed by the
U.S. Senate. He comes to government service from a career in higher education and private
philanthropy. Most recently, from 1995 to 1998, he served as the President of the Social Science
Research Council, a position he also held from 1979 to 1985. For ten years he was Senior Vice
President of the Rockefeller Foundation, where he directed the international Science-Based
Development program involving activities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He served for five
years as the Director of the National Opinion Research Center, based at the University of
Chicago. He taught for fifteen years at the University of Chicago, and for shorter periods, taught
at Stanford University (where he received his Ph.D.), Columbia University, Washington
University, the University of Nairobi, and Makerere University (Uganda).
The Director of the Census Bureau heads an agency that produces an extensive array of economic
and demographic statistics for the nation -- including basic data on consumer prices, labor force
participation, poverty, housing conditions and many other dimensions of our economy and
society. Dr. Prewitt manages a large staff of economists, statisticians, demographers, and survey
experts. His main attention has been on the operations of Census 2000 -- often described as the
largest peacetime mobilization in history. Managing a budget of approximately $7.5 billion and
a permanent and part-time decennial staff that at peak is more than 500,000 persons, Dr. Prewitt
has overall responsibility for ensuring that 275 million residents are correctly counted. In
addition to general management, his duties involve numerous appearances before the U.S.
Congress, cooperation with other federal agencies, dozens of press conferences and related media
events, and hundreds of meetings with officials and stakeholders across the country. He is
especially concerned with public confidence in the census and, more generally, with promoting
Census 2000 as a major civic event.
Dr. Prewitt is the author or co-author of a dozen books, and more than 50 contributions to
professional journals and edited collections. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship,
an honorary degree from Southern Methodist University, a Distinguished Service Award from
the New School for Social Research, and The Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit from the
Federal Republic of Germany. He has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been an officer or served on the Board of
each of these organizations. He has also served on advisory boards to the World Bank, the World
Health Organization, and UNESCO.
Born March 16, 1936, in Alton, Ill., Dr. Prewitt has two children by his first marriage, and is now
married to Susan Vogel, an art historian and film-maker.
Last Update: June 26, 2000
