U.S. Bureau of the Census

Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the population of the United States be counted every 10 years for the purposes of apportioning members of Congress and direct taxes to the states. From the first census in 1790 until the census of 1880, the federal judiciary, through the U.S. Marshals Service, was responsible for the census. In 1880, Congress established a separate census office in the Department of the Interior and in 1902 established the U.S. Census Bureau as a division of the Department of Commerce. The sole purpose of the Census Bureau is to collect data and compile statistical analyses about the people and other select entities of the United States. In addition to the decennial population census, the Census Bureau also performs a Census of Governments every 5 years (covering government organization, government [Page 2153]finances, and public employment in every state), as well as more than 100 annual surveys in areas as diverse as unemployment and housing. It is the job of the Census Bureau to collect and store these data, analyze them, and make them publicly available in both raw and analyzed form. It is also the Census Bureau's responsibility to protect the confidentiality of all data collected. The data on individuals are never reported, and raw census data can only be examined by the public after 72 years have passed.

Since its inception, the targets and questions of the census have reflected the political and social characteristics of the day. The first census in 1790 collected the names of every household head, counted the number of people in the household, including 3/5 of a person for each slave in the household, and specifically excluded American Indians. Collecting and tabulating the data on 3.8 million Americans took 18 months. By 1880, the number questions regarding social conditions and demographics had increased, the “3/5 rule” for African Americans had been eliminated, and the census included American Indians and Chinese. This census, the last to be done by hand, counted 50 million Americans and took 8 years to tabulate. It was barely completed by the time the 1890 census was ready to be taken. (In preparation for the 1890 census, a competition to create a tabulating machine was won by Herman Hollerith, and the company he founded to produce the tabulating machines eventually became the beginnings of the IBM Corporation.) By 2000, the census counted 281 million Americans, most census forms were mailed by citizens to the Census Bureau, and the data were made available on the Internet by the middle of 2001.

Since 1790, the census has changed from a simple counting of households to a mechanism for collecting an extremely wide range of demographic and economic data about the United States and its citizens. In the same time, the uses of the data have changed significantly, expanding from its original purpose of assigning congressional representatives to include such things as social service resources allocation, public policy planning, and economic analyses. Finally, access to the data has changed since the inception of the census and the Census Bureau, from data being available to a small number of elected officials and government bureaucrats to today's Internet-based access to every citizen and organization in the country.

...