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.
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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.
The increase in federal funding over four years is due to COVID-19 relief spending, as well as boosts in payments for Medicare — which provides federal health insurance for people age 65 and over — as more baby boomers in the U.S. became senior citizens, said Allison Plyer, chief demographer at The Data Center in New Orleans.
“Congress decided that federal funding should be distributed based on data,” Plyer said.
COVID-19 relief funds accounted for a quarter of the federal spending allocated with census figures' help in 2021 — or more than $700 billion.
“COVID-19, ... it was never predicted but our data was the first line of defense in order to get funding to states,” said Ceci Villa Ross, a Census Bureau official who wrote the report.
The breadth of the programs and the amount of money at stake demonstrate how some communities can miss out on funding opportunities if they aren't counted. The 2020 census was among the most difficult in recent memory because of obstacles posed by the spread of COVID-19, which in the U.S. coincided with the head count.
Adding to the difficulties were hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, wildfires in the West and unsuccessful efforts by the Trump administration to add a citizenship question to the census questionnaire, which critics say may have scared off immigrants and others.
Black, Hispanic and American Indian residents were missed at higher rates in the 2020 census than they were in the 2010 census, with the undercount 3.3% for the Black population, almost 5% for Hispanics and 5.6% for American Indians and Native Alaskans living on reservations.
Additionally, six states had undercounts: Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.
In an effort to make sure communities get their fair share of money despite the undercounts, the Census Bureau has incorporated other data sources, in addition to the numbers from the 2020 census, to calculate population estimates which are updated each year between censuses and also used for helping determine federal funding.
Besides helping guide the distribution of federal funding, figures from the census determine how many congressional seats each state gets and are used for redrawing political districts.
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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at @MikeSchneiderAP