Every ten years, since 1790, the people of the United States engage in a civic exercise central to our representative democracy: We conduct and participate in a full enumeration of the population. Mandated in Article 1, Section 2 of our Constitution, the decennial census provides the information necessary to apportion seats in Congress among the states as well as how each state's population is distributed among those seats. At its heart, the decennial census is a geographical exercise, from identifying the location of households and individuals, to distributing questionnaires and collecting information, to delineating Congressional Districts based on the number of people and their distribution. Going beyond its constitutional purpose, the decennial census provides a snapshot of our nation, providing critical baseline data for use in planning and decision making at all levels of geography, from the nation as a whole, to neighborhood scale. Data collected by the census are used to distribute billions of dollars in federal funds.
The Census Bureau's mission in conducting the decennial census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place. Geographic information and methods are critical to the success of this mission. And, the statistical and geographical information collected and disseminated by the Census Bureau are critical to data users, analysts, and decision makers. We are excited to be the focus of a special issue of The Geography Teacher and to have the opportunity to discuss the decennial census and the work of the Census Bureau. We are especially excited for this opportunity to highlight the role of geography and geographic information and the work of geographers in carrying out the Census Bureau's mission to provide the high-quality demographic and economic data needed by data users and decision makers at all levels of our society.
We hope you will find these articles to be useful additions to the work you do in teaching geography and training the next generations of geographers and geographic data users. And, with the 2020 Census just around the corner, we hope these articles help convey the importance of the census in American life as well as the value of geography in understanding the diversity of our nation.
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Deirdre Dalpiaz Bishop
Deirdre Dalpiaz Bishop is chief of the Geography Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, leading the development of a national geospatial database. She has served as chief of the Decennial Census Management Division, where she implemented the 2020 Census Research and Testing Program and completed the 2020 Census Operational Plan.