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 Chapter 1

“In its best interests, a civilized nation counts and profiles its people and institutions. Doing so ably and objectively is the abiding mission of the United States Census Bureau. We honor privacy, shun partisanship, invite scrutiny, and share our expertise globally. Striving to excel, we chronicle the Nation’s past, describe its present, and illuminate its future.”

As the factfinder for the Nation, the Bureau of the Census, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, collects, tabulates, and disseminates statistical data to meet a variety of needs. The original and foremost Census Bureau obligation is to provide the most complete and accurate population count possible for apportionment of the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Beyond this obligation, numerous other needs for Census Bureau data have developed over the years, such as the redistricting of States for congressional and legislative representation purposes, the charting of social and economic trends, the distribution of public funds authorized in Federal and State legislation, and the administration of public and private programs. All these needs require that the Census Bureau recognize many kinds of geographic areas—legal, administrative, and statistical—as the framework for the tabulation and presentation of data from its decennial, economic, agriculture, and governments censuses, as well as its periodic sample surveys and estimates programs.

The success of a census or sample survey depends not only on how well the Census Bureau designs the questionnaire, collects the data, and processes the results, but also on how well it links the collected data to geographic areas. In defining the geographic area framework for each specific census or survey, the geographic requirements consist of identifying the legal, administrative, and statistical entities to be used; promulgating official standards for those entities, where appropriate; determining the names, numeric codes, and boundaries for the entities selected; entering the required information about these entities into the TIGER data base; preparing the maps necessary to support the data collection and data Notes and References Census Bureau Geography1-1