How do locals decide where to build roads? How are federal dollars distributed to veterans, rural towns or job training programs? How do businesses decide where to locate, expand or offer products and services? There’s one little-appreciated source of information behind it all: the American Community Survey (ACS).
The ACS is an annual survey administered by the Census Bureau. Having replaced the once-a-decade Census long form in 2005, the ACS provides much more timely estimates for communities nationwide yearly on measures of ancestry, citizenship, educational attainment, income, language proficiency, migration, disability, employment, housing characteristics and more. Businesses, individuals, researchers, and all levels of government count on the ACS to deliver up-to-date, reliable and relevant information.
The quality of the ACS is at risk due to underfunding.
To get an accurate picture of what is happening in a nation of 340 million people, it is essential to have a large and frequent sample. Currently, the ACS surveys 295,000 households monthly. While that may seem like a huge survey, it means any household is likely to spend an average of only 40 minutes on it every 40 years.
Without sufficient funding, the Census Bureau will have to reduce the sample size, number of topics covered, frequency of surveying, or timeliness of its reports, or a combination of these downgrades. Such an outcome would have severe effects on users.
Rural areas are the most likely to feel these effects. Any cutback in sampling will mean less coverage of small areas, leaving businesses, policymakers, and local and state officials in the dark about vital decisions.
As the chief economist of a construction industry association, I know firsthand how much businesses and developers rely on ACS information for investment, location and marketing decisions. ACS helps identify where a customer base, labor pool, and public resources are most favorable for construction, expansion and growth.
In addition to small-business owners and economists, policymakers need concrete data about America’s people and places if they are to make government more efficient and reduce unnecessary spending. ACS data help allocate trillions of dollars in federal funds across more than 300 programs, including Medicaid, infrastructure and veterans’ benefits, ensuring that federal spending is directed to programs and projects based on current population and needs.
A clear understanding of local communities also enables more innovative local governance, especially for rural areas. States and counties use ACS data for planning in school systems, broadband access, road construction, economic development and disaster recovery, without duplicative surveys or guesswork.
At all levels of government, the ACS empowers officials to adapt their work and decisions to the people they serve through data, not bureaucracy or political patronage.
Some might argue that information about states and localities shouldn’t need to be collected at the federal level and that this level of granularity is the responsibility of county or state government. However, the scale of the ACS and the importance of consistency across all American communities and populations are precisely what set it apart as the richest source of information we have about American society.
What needs to be done? Stabilize and strengthen the ACS. Maintain its mandatory status, invest in modernization, and increase sample sizes for rural areas.
Focus on outcomes. Data isn’t about politics; it’s about using federal dollars wisely to give our communities and companies the tools they need to grow.
The ACS is about the government giving back to the public and a thriving private sector. Preserving and strengthening it isn’t just good policy, it’s common sense. America wins when we plan with facts.
