PHSafe: Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Supplemental Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (S-DHC)

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sexton, William, Berghel, Skye, Carlson, Bayard, Haney, Sam, Hartman, Luke, Hay, Michael, Machanavajjhala, Ashwin, Miklau, Gerome, Pai, Amritha, Rajpal, Simran, Pujol, David, Shrestha, Ruchit, Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sexton, William
Berghel, Skye
Carlson, Bayard
Haney, Sam
Hartman, Luke
Hay, Michael
Machanavajjhala, Ashwin
Miklau, Gerome
Pai, Amritha
Rajpal, Simran
Pujol, David
Shrestha, Ruchit
Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
author_facet Sexton, William
Berghel, Skye
Carlson, Bayard
Haney, Sam
Hartman, Luke
Hay, Michael
Machanavajjhala, Ashwin
Miklau, Gerome
Pai, Amritha
Rajpal, Simran
Pujol, David
Shrestha, Ruchit
Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
contents This article describes the disclosure avoidance algorithm that the U.S. Census Bureau used to protect the 2020 Census Supplemental Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (S-DHC). The tabulations contain statistics of counts of U.S. persons living in certain types of households, including averages. The article describes the PHSafe algorithm, which is based on adding noise drawn from a discrete Gaussian distribution to the statistics of interest. We prove that the algorithm satisfies a well-studied variant of differential privacy, called zero-concentrated differential privacy. We then describe how the algorithm was implemented on Tumult Analytics and briefly outline the parameterization and tuning of the algorithm.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01254
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PHSafe: Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Supplemental Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (S-DHC)
Sexton, William
Berghel, Skye
Carlson, Bayard
Haney, Sam
Hartman, Luke
Hay, Michael
Machanavajjhala, Ashwin
Miklau, Gerome
Pai, Amritha
Rajpal, Simran
Pujol, David
Shrestha, Ruchit
Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
This article describes the disclosure avoidance algorithm that the U.S. Census Bureau used to protect the 2020 Census Supplemental Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (S-DHC). The tabulations contain statistics of counts of U.S. persons living in certain types of households, including averages. The article describes the PHSafe algorithm, which is based on adding noise drawn from a discrete Gaussian distribution to the statistics of interest. We prove that the algorithm satisfies a well-studied variant of differential privacy, called zero-concentrated differential privacy. We then describe how the algorithm was implemented on Tumult Analytics and briefly outline the parameterization and tuning of the algorithm.
title PHSafe: Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Supplemental Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (S-DHC)
topic Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01254