**GAO-08-230T**                      Published: Oct 29, 2007. Publicly Released: Oct 29, 2007.                  

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## Highlights

The decennial census is a constitutionally-mandated activity that produces critical data used to apportion congressional seats, redraw congressional districts, and allocate billions of dollars in federal assistance. This testimony discusses (1) the various measures of population used to allocate federal grant funds (2) how the accuracy of the population count and measurement of accuracy have evolved and the U.S. Census Bureau's (Bureau) plan for coverage measurement in 2010; and (3) the potential impact that differences in population estimates can have on the allocation of grant funds. This testimony is based primarily on GAO's issued work in which it evaluated the sensitivity of grant formulas to population estimates.

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## Topics

Government Operations

Allocation (Government accounting)Block grantsCensusComparative analysisData collectionData integrityFederal aid to statesFederal fundsFederal grantsstate relationsFunds managementGrants to statesPopulation growthPopulation statisticsStatistical dataSurveys