The head count of every U.S. resident in 2020 helped guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual federal spending, underscoring the importance of participating in the once-a-decade census, according to a new report released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
There were 353 federal assistance programs that used the Census Bureau data in 2021 to steer the allocation of the federal funding, up from 316 programs accounting for $1.5 trillion in 2017, the time frame for the last update of a similar study.
The federal funding is distributed to state and local governments, nonprofits, businesses and households. In 2021, it helped pay for health care, education, school lunch programs, COVID-19 relief, child care, food assistance programs and highway construction, among other things.
“It almost doubled and makes it even more clear the importance of census data in evidence-based policy making and having a healthy economy,” said George Washington University research professor Andrew Reamer, who helped put together the report.
The Census Bureau, which conducts the U.S. censuses every 10 years, doesn’t determine how the federal funding is distributed.