Reason #2: POLITICAL POWER   Aside from gathering information of immense practical and historical value, the Decennial Census is used to determine how many seats each state will be given in the U.S. House of Representatives. States also use the information to realign congressional and state legislative districts in their states, taking into account population shifts since the last census.

"The Founders of our fledgling nation had a bold and ambitious plan to empower the people over their new government. The plan was to count every person living in the newly created United States of America, and to use that count to determine representation in the Congress.

Enshrining this invention in our Constitution marked a turning point in world history."
-U.S. Census Bureau, Aug. 8, 2025

Reason #3: MONEY    In the report, "Uses of Decennial Census Programs Data in Federal Funds Distribution: Fiscal Year 2021", the Census Bureau estimated that more than $2.8 trillion in federal funds were distributed in whole or in part to states, communities, tribal governments, and other recipients using Census Bureau data.

That's an unimaginable amount of money (unless you are US Congress member)! States, cities, oounties and townships can make use of that money, so the arguments over how many people live in a given area can sometimes get fierce. By the way...that number is soooo big that if all you did was to just count out loud to 2 trillion, it would take you roughly 480,000 years!!