The city poured considerable resources into getting as many residents as possible to fill out their census forms, and now awaits the results. That number is one million. The most basic purpose of the census is to allow the people of our representative democracy to fine-tune their government, recalibrating every 10 years to account for ebbs, flows and shifts in population. More practically, the population figures dictate federal funding for everything from roads, bridges and school textbooks to drug treatment programs and health care for the poor. Urban planners and government researchers use the numbers to place schools, create branch libraries and open post offices.
Traffic engineers study commuter patterns to decide where to widen roads and add freeway offramps.
The census touches everyone, though few may be aware of it, said John Haaga, a demographer with the nonpartisan Population Reference Bureau. Once the province of a few experts, the data can now be grabbed off the Internet by anyone with a desktop computer. It's the gospel truth. Demographers across the country are just as eager to delve into the data. Other data could answer different questions, such as how commuting patterns have developed in the far reaches of the Inland Empire, or the size of the Hmong population in Merced.