Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics File

In "The 2020 Census Disclosure Avoidance System TopDown Algorithm," Abowd et al. (2022) describe the concepts and methods used by the Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) to produce formally private output in support of the 2020 Census statistical data product releases, with a particular focus on the DAS implementation that was used to create the 2020 Census Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File. In this paper we describe the updates to the DAS that were required to release the Demographic and Housing Characteristics (DHC) File, which provides more granular tables than other statistical data products, such as the Redistricting Data Summary File. We also describe the final configuration parameters used for the 2020 production DHC DAS implementation, error metrics for these production statistical data products, and plans for future experimental data products that provide confidence intervals for confidential 2020 Census tabulations.