Demographic Analysis (DA) is a well-developed tool for evaluating population coverage. DA is an analytic approach that has been extensively used at the Census Bureau to measure coverage of the national population in every census since 1960 (see Siegel and Zelnik, 1966; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1974, 1988; Robinson et al., 1993a for the demographic evaluations of the 1960- 1990 censuses; and U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001, for the initial DA evaluation of Census 2000).

Demographic Analysis represents a macro-level approach for estimating the net undercount by comparing aggregate sets of data or counts. The demographic approach differs fundamentally from the survey-based Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (A.C.E.). The traditional DA population benchmarks are developed for the census date by analyzing various types of demographic data essentially independent of the census, such as administrative statistics on births, deaths, authorized international migration, and Medicare enrollments, as well as estimates of legal emigration and net unauthorized immigration.  The difference between the DA benchmarks and the census count provides an estimate of the census net undercount.  Dividing the net undercount by the DA benchmark provides an estimate of the net undercount rate. (See Appendix A of U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001, for more details of the DA methodology).