Joseph Adna Hill was an American statistician. He served as a chief statistician for the U. S. Census Bureau.
Background
Hill was born on May 5, 1860 in Stewartstown, New Hampshire, United States. He the youngest of a family of three sons of Joseph Bancroft Hill, a Congregational minister, and Harriet (Brown) Hill. Of his two brothers, William Bancroft became a professor of Biblical literature in Vassar College and Charles Ebenezer a prominent lawyer in Baltimore.
The family traced its descent from Ralph Hill, who came over from England prior to 1638, settled at Plymouth, and was later one of the founders of the town of Billerica, Massachussets.
Education
Hill graduated from Harvard in 1885, and went on to a master's degree in 1887. Later he studied at the University of Halle, Germany, where he received his Ph. D. in 1892.
Career
Hill was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1893 and an instructor in political economy at Harvard, 1895-1896. In 1897 he went to Europe as a representative of the Massachusetts State Tax Commission to investigate European systems of taxation. Out of this experience came a volume entitled The English Income Tax (1899), largely a detailed description of the methods employed in assessing and collecting that tax in England, which differ radically from those later adopted in the United States.
From 1898 to his death (except for two years, 1907-1909, with the Immigration Commission) Hill was engaged in statistical work in the United States Bureau of the Census. He contributed materially to the supplementary analysis of the Census of 1900 and to the analytical sections of the reports of the Census of 1910 and served as assistant director of the 1920 and 1930 censuses. In 1933 he was named chief of the newly established division of statistical research in the Census Bureau, a position he held until his death. He also created the conception of the Method of Equal Proportions, or Huntington-Hill method of apportionment of seats in the U. S. House of Representatives to the states, as a function of their populations determined in the U. S. census.
He reached the compulsory retirement age in 1930, at a time when extensions were granted only on approval of the president and usually for not more than a single year. In his case, however, approval was given without time limit, and he continued in service for eight more years. Hill's principal publications, besides the volume on the English income tax, were a report on the occupations and fecundity of immigrants for the Immigration Commission and various official publications of the Census Bureau, including a report on Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870-1920 (1929) and reports on child labor, marriage and divorce, illiteracy, and other subjects.
He contributed many articles to economic and statistical journals, including a report on current activities in the Census Bureau which appeared in each issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association for many years. Especially noteworthy among his general articles was his "Recent Northward Migration of the Negro, " first published in the Monthly Labor Review for March 1924, which called attention to that important and continuing population movement as it was indicated by the 1920 Census.
One of his unofficial activities was the permanent chairmanship of a small group organized in 1916 and known as the "Round Table, " which held dinner meetings at intervals of three weeks in the Cosmos Club in Washington for the discussion of various economic subjects.
He died suddenly of a heart attack; his remains were cremated and the ashes deposited in the family burial plot in Temple, New Hampshire.
Membership
Hill served as president of the American Statistical Association in 1919.
Personality
Hill was short in stature and always wore a beard, trimmed short, which, as beards became scarcer under changing American custom, gave him a somewhat distinguished appearance. He was highly regarded by his associates.