美国将公布大萧条时期人口普查资料

It was a decade when tens of millions of people in the US experienced mass unemployment and social upheaval as the nation clawed its way out of the Great Depression and rumblings of global war were heard from abroad.

Now, intimate details of 132 million people who lived through the 1930s will be disclosed as the US government releases the 1940 census on April 2 to the public for the first time after 72 years of privacy protection lapses.

Access to the records will be free and open to anyone on the Internet — but they will not be immediately name searchable.

For genealogists and family historians, the 1940 census release is the most important disclosure of ancestral secrets in a decade and could shake the branches of many family trees. Scholars expect the records to help draw a more pointillistic portrait of a transformative decade in American life.

More than 120,000 enumerators surveyed 132 million people for the Sixteenth Decennial Census — 21 million of whom are alive today in the US and Puerto Rico, according to the US Census Bureau.

The survey contained 34 questions directed at all households, plus 16 supplemental questions asked of 5 percent of the population. New questions reflected the government's intent on documenting the turbulent decade, by generating data on homelessness, migration, widespread unemployment, irregular salaries and fertility decline.

Some of the most contentious questions focused on personal income and were deemed so sensitive they were placed at the end of the survey. Less than 300,000 people opted to have their income responses sealed.

(Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

双语资讯

(Agencies)

上世纪经济大萧条时期，美国深陷其中，数百万美国人经历了大规模的失业来袭和社会动乱，而且从全球来看，一战的阴霾还在持续。

如今，生活在20世纪30年代大萧条期间的1.32亿人的私密详情将被公开。在72年的隐私保护到期后，美国政府将于4月2日向公众公布1940年的人口普查结果。

人们可以在网上免费查阅这些记录，但不会立刻搜索到姓名。

对系谱学家和家庭史专家来说，公布上世纪40年代的普查结果是十年来最重要的上代信息披露，可能会动摇很多家谱的分支。学者希望这份记录能够更生动地描绘出美国生活史上这一动荡年代。

根据美国人口普查局的数据，超过12万普查人员当年对1.32亿人进行了第16次人口普查，人口普查每十年进行一次。如今，参与普查的其中2100万人仍在世，生活在美国和波多黎各。

此次人口普查包括34个问题，用于所有家庭回答，还有16个补充问题，由其中5%的人口回答。新增问题反映出政府意图通过生成流浪、迁移、大规模失业、不固定工资、和生育率的下降等数据，来记录动荡的年代。

一些最有争议的问题集中在个人收入，被认为非常敏感，因此列在调查的最末。不到30万人选择不予回答。

Vocabulary:

genealogist: 系谱学家

family tree: 家谱

contentious: 有争议的