Since 1970, local-area data on income, housing characteristics, property values, ancestry, educational attainment, occupation, language spoken at home, disability, place of work, commuting, employment, and occupation have come from the census long form, which has been distributed to one in six households. Between 2003 and 2008, the ACS will approach about one in seven. The long form provides a snapshot of the country once a decade. The ACS will release a moving picture every year. In the long run, the Master Address File could become a great asset.
Federal law prohibits the government from selling or giving away individual addresses.
But the Census Bureau has been doing contract research for other agencies for years. If it held a continually updated address list of the entire country, this part of the bureau's business would probably grow, and the quality of public data would improve. We already take a national survey on this subject for the Justice Department, but we don't interview enough people in any one state to report that state separately. If we put a temporary question on the American Community Survey forms just in that state, we could quickly get enough cases to compare one state to the national averages. As more government functions pass from federal to state control, the ACS could be an important evaluation tool.