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The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the establishment of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations and has named Sheldon H. Danziger as a member the committee.

The National Advisory Committee will advise the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, will advise the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race and ethnicity, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other populations.

“We expect that the expertise of this committee will help us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee will help ensure that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The National Advisory Committee members, who serve at the discretion of the Census Bureau director, are chosen to serve based on expertise and knowledge of the cultural patterns, issues and/or statistical needs of hard-to-count populations.

Sheldon H. Danziger is the Henry J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He a research professor at the Population Studies Center and director of the National Poverty Center at Michigan. He directed the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin from 1983 to 1988. His research focuses on social welfare policies and on the effects of economic, demographic and public policy changes on trends in poverty and inequality. His work includes an examination of how the 1996 welfare reform affected the work effort, family income and material well-being of single mothers and of the impact of poverty on children and youth. He is a published author and is currently studying the effects of the Great Recession and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on workers and families.