Critical National Data Source in Jeopardy

On May 9, citing concerns over cost and privacy, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of eliminating all funding for the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The social, economic, and housing questions in the ACS, which formerly were asked as part of the “long-form” decennial census, are administered annually to a smaller sample of Americans, providing continually updated data in the 10 years between censuses. De-funding the ACS would eliminate the only existing source of objective, consistent, comprehensive, and recent information about the nation’s social, economic, and demographic characteristics for every community (down to the neighborhood level) in the United States.

Experts note that eliminating the ACS would hinder data-driven decision making in both the public and private sectors. According to a 2010 report by Andrew Reamer of the Brookings Institution, the federal government allocates more than $400 billion annually in program funds to state and local governments based in whole or in part on ACS data. Private businesses consult ACS data when deciding where to locate and expand, what goods and services to offer, employee training needs, and long-term investment opportunities, as reported by Matthew Phillips of Bloomberg Business Week. Non-profit organizations also use the ACS to guide service planning and evaluate how well their programs are working. All these entities would have to find other, less comprehensive and less recent data sources upon which to make decisions.

As a compromise, backers of de-funding may advocate making the ACS voluntary in future years. However, this would significantly reduce the quality of the data and it would cost the government more money to ensure accurate results.

A House-Senate conference will decide the fate of the ACS later this year.

For more information, please contact Phil Sparks ([email protected]) at The Census Project.

Posted by kidsdata.org

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