Ninety-five percent of U.S. households have been accounted for in the 2020 Census, but many Americans still have not responded as the Sept. 30 deadline looms.
Every uncounted local person means less funding for local governments.
Here are six reasons why Census responses matter to local counties, according to the Population Reference Bureau.
*Money for states and towns: They help determine the amount of money that state governments and local communities receive from the federal government for the next decade for health, education, housing, and infrastructure.
Those programs include Medicaid, highway planning and construction, special education grants to states, the National School Lunch Program and Head Start. For instance, the Census determined how more than $675 billion in federal funds was distributed to states and local communities in 2015.
*Planning: Governments, business, and nonprofits make decisions with the data to determine the need for new roads, hospitals, schools, and other public sector investments. Businesses use it as key information about changing needs for the U.S. population.
*Emergency response: Public health workers can use it to track disease outbreaks, combat the opioid epidemic and improve child health, for instance. Numbers are used by first responders and disaster recovery personnel to figure out where and how much help is needed.
*Census data is combined with birth, death and migration information to produce annual population and housing unit estimates for a variety of federal surveys.
*State population counts are used to reapportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives
*Officials use results to help redraw congressional, state, and local district boundaries so each person’s voting power is similar.
To respond, visit 2020census.gov, or call the U.S. Census Bureau for support. Customer service representatives are available every day from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Eastern Time. For English, call (844) 330-2020; and in Spanish, call (844) 468-2020.

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