An early 1900s census taker (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)
Have you ever wondered just how many humans there are in the United States? Well, so does the United States government! Believe it or not, the census of 2000 counted 281,421,906 people! What’s a census, you ask? Well, a census is an official count of all the people in the United States, and it’s required by the United States Constitution. The federal government does this official count every 10 years.
A census helps people plan for growth and infrastructure needs. Infrastructure is a 10-cent word meaning those items that help a country to run like sewer systems, roads, schools, pipelines, railroads, tunnels, communication systems and so on. A census also determines how many seats in the House of Representatives each state has. This number is important because that determines how many electoral college votes each state has. Electoral college votes are used during presidential elections. Pretty confusing, eh?
The first census was taken in 1790. At that time, there were more than 3.9 million people. The next census will be taken in 2010.
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