Repugs want to eliminate the Census' American Community Survey

[marmar]

from the Next American City blog:



Republicans in Congress have mobilized to eliminate one of the most important and cost-effective federal programs for cities: The American Community Survey (ACS).

For those unfamiliar with the ACS, here’s a summary from the New York Times:

“Each year the Census Bureau polls a representative, randomized sample of about three million American households about demographics, habits, languages spoken, occupation, housing and various other categories. The resulting numbers are released without identifying individuals, and offer current demographic portraits of even the country’s tiniest communities.”

This data is in turn used by cities, and the people who study cities, to understand important demographic changes. Without this information, you cannot know if a neighborhood is getting richer or poorer, or more unequal, or more or less populated, or suffering white flight to the suburbs or filling in with immigrants (and if so, where they came from). Anyone who has ever written a graduate thesis on gentrification has relied on ACS data.

The federal government as well as state, county and city governments rely on ACS data. Education dollars must go where there are students, anti-poverty dollars must go where there are poor people and roads must be built where people are moving. A 2010 study by the Brookings Institution found that “In [fiscal year] 2008, 184 federal domestic assistance programs used ACS-related datasets to help guide the distribution of $416 billion, 29 percent of all federal assistance.” This includes funding for everything from Medicaid to transportation. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://americancity.org/daily/entry/urban-nation-in-defense-of-the-acs

[phantom power]

1. Facts undermine their entire ideology, so their only play is to stop collecting them