How America Has Changed Since the First Census in 1790
By
Diana Shishkina, Stacker News
On 5/13/21 at 8:00 PM EDT
The U.S. Census Bureau announced April 26 that the country's population between 2010 and 2020 had experienced its second-slowest rate of growth in U.S. history, topping out at 331 million people. Additionally, political power was slated to move south and west from the Northeast and Midwest, with Texas gaining two congressional seats and Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gaining one. Losing one seat each were California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Conducting a census and counting the American population every 10 years has been a practice since the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. Besides being a growing source of economic, demographic, and social information about the nation's people and being used to determine how many Congressional seats and electoral votes each state receives, the questions asked by each version of the census and the answers received show how the country has changed amid colonization, war, immigration, civil rights movements, and a growing economy. The census also guides federal funding for many public programs, including those in the realm of healthcare, highway planning, and education.