The Constitution declares that “[an] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” The primary purpose was to assign Congressional delegates to the member States based on population, but the Census Bureau does a lot more than just count heads. They collect all sorts of data, and employ math/stats people to come up with estimates for those years when we don’t have a census.
Here’s something I bet you didn’t know (I didn’t know until I looked):
| 2006 Census Estimate | Households | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Married-couple family household | 55,521,868 | 49.7% |
| Male householder, no wife present family household | 5,121,415 | 4.6% |
| Female householder, no husband present family household | 13,920,783 | 12.5% |
| Nonfamily household | 37,053,336 | 33.2% |
| Total households | 111,617,402 |
Given the data:
- …should tax policy favor married people?
- …should housing developers and planning policies assume that residents will be married-couple family households?
- …should people be smacked when they continue to claim that half of marriages end in divorce?
Only the third one is a rhetorical question (the answer is yes).
NaBloPoMo 9