Census matters, especially for rural counties, By William O’Hare, April 29, 2010, Daily Yonder: “We all have heard that results of the U.S. Census are used to determine how billions of dollars in federal grants and loans are distributed around the country. But how much does it matter? Who receives this funding? How much of this federal funding goes to rural areas? And which rural areas benefit most? We can begin to answer some of these questions thanks to some unique research conducted by the Brookings Institution, a non-profit non-partisan research group in Washington, D.C. Scholars there identified nearly $450 billion in federal grants, loans and direct payments that were distributed , in part, based on data from the U.S. Census. They made a special file available to us that shows how those funds were distributed to each county. Most (93%) of these federal funds came out of four program functions: health care (mostly Medicaid); transportation (such as highway planning and construction); income security (such as Section 8 Housing Vouchers); and education, training, employment, and social services (such as Special Education Grants to States). The information is available online here…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty