When Warren Brown thinks of an action photo featuring a demographer, he envisions saving a set of critical population data from a burning building. That might not seem so unlikely when you consider how important population projections can be in the allocation of public resources.
Brown directs the Applied Demography Program, a unit of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government carried out in partnership with the state’s Office of Planning and Budget. The program provides state and local leaders with regularly updated, consistent population projections useful for making informed policy decisions.
Whether it be housing, water supply, schools, health services, roads or economic development, long-range planning and efforts to anticipate future scenarios are critical in today’s government environment, he said.
“Governments of all sizes have to pay close attention to future needs and uses of resources,” he said. “By combining local trends with forecasts of national, state and regional changes and releasing the data every two years, the Applied Demography Program fills the gap between what the U.S. census does for the nation and what counties and cities do on their own.”
Since the best projections combine technical expertise with local knowledge, county workers play key roles in the program’s work by reviewing preliminary projections. The institute then publishes revised projections, along with guidelines on how they can be used for strategic planning. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division is incorporating the population projections into its process for developing regional water plans.
Brown’s interest in demographics was sparked while he was studying American history in college.
“I was fascinated by the different factors that caused communities to grow and then subsequently decline,” he said.
Acting on that interest led to a doctorate in development sociology at Cornell University. Brown worked with Cornell’s Cooperative Extension Service, where he helped county agents utilize demographic data in their program planning. The Applied Demography Program’s work reflects the shift in demographics research Brown has witnessed.
“For many years, we spent the majority of our time working to access the data, which could be a cumbersome process-imagine large tape reels and boxes of printed information,” he said. “With the advent of computer software, CDs and eventually the Internet, we can now focus on analyzing what the data means and how it can be applied in government decision making.”
Brown is a frequent collaborator with and consultant to the U.S. Census Bureau. He is past chair of the bureau’s Federal State Cooperative for Population Estimates and recently authored a handbook that helps researchers better understand and use data of the bureau’s American Community Survey.
The National Academy of Sciences recently tapped him to serve as an expert on its Committee on National Statistics, a five-year project aimed at evaluating the 2010 census.
“It is exciting to be working in a time when population trends and projections are being looked upon as having real impact on planning for the future,” he said.
