Statistical agencies face a dual mandate to publish accurate statistics while protecting respondent privacy. Increasing privacy protection requires decreased accuracy. Recognizing this as a resource allocation problem, we propose an economic solution: operate where the marginal cost of...

Using only 34 published tables, we reconstruct five variables (census block, sex, age, race, and ethnicity) in the confidential 2010 Census person records. Using the 38-bin age variable tabulated at the census block level, at most 20.1% of reconstructed records can differ from their confidential...