Making Sense of the Census
From April 1, 2020:
April 1, 2020, is officially census day for the constitutionally-mandated decennial census in the United States, a questionnaire sent out every 10 years to gather demographics about the country’s population.
And while the data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau tells the story of population growth, according to Kennesaw State Assistant Professor of Geography Dr. Paul N. McDaniel, the census is vital for influencing nearly every level of government, business and even nonprofits.
Take Georgia, for example. McDaniel says that the metro-Atlanta region’s population grew by 13.9 percent from 2010 to 2019 according to American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau, and the region is expected to continue growing.
“There has been a lot of economic opportunity in the Atlanta region, so people are migrating here,” he said. “I expect this year’s census to show an increase and diversification in Georgia’s population, especially in the metro-Atlanta area, and population estimates from the Atlanta Regional Commission suggest that the Atlanta metro region will grow by over 2.5 million people by 2050, bringing the metro area’s total population to 8.6 million.”
And it’s that population growth that could have broad implications for the state.
Continue reading the full article here.
Originally published at https://chss.kennesaw.edu on April 1, 2020.
