Census Matters: How the Census Shapes Funding for Children
In FY 2023, billions of dollars went to census-guided programs for children. A census miscount can influence where billions of dollars go.
(Illustration: Luna Velez / POGO)
Census Matters is a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) series that tracks the distribution of census-guided federal funding to individual states and that details how the decennial census influences the allocation of those funds across the United States.
In our previous Census Matters report, POGO tracked how 371 federal assistance programs geographically distributed funds to states in fiscal year 2023. Those funds provide significant resources to many communities. In this report, POGO examines how census accuracy impacts critical federal funding for children aged 0–18 and the services needed to support a wide range of areas that shape their lives, including health, education, housing, economic development, and more.1
Many people may not realize how influential the census is in determining how much federal money gets allocated to different geographic regions across the country. Census-guided programs serving children deliver funds either directly to communities or to state agencies. The census influences funding distribution in myriad ways: Depending on the program, it may use census data such as location, population, household income, age, school districts, and school enrollment to determine state eligibility and distribution.
The deficit or surplus of federal funding a state may receive stemming from inaccurate counts can directly impact children’s educational and economic outcomes and more. An undercount could mean fewer dollars, thereby fewer resources. An overcount could result in a state receiving more federal funds than its population warrants; for programs with fixed appropriations, this may proportionately reduce the share available to other states.
Children Are Especially Vulnerable to Miscounts
The U.S. Census Bureau released an analysis documenting the undercount of children aged 0–4 in the 2020 census: This age group was undercounted more than any other demographic, with approximately 1 million of the young children going uncounted in the 2020 census. They acknowledged that children have historically been miscounted, potentially leading certain states to lose out on significant funding and critical resources for them.2
The gap in reporting children in the census may stem from a variety of factors, including but not limited to:
High household mobility. Children may not be reported or may be harder to track if they are constantly moving and changing addresses, if they reside in multiple households, or if they reside in temporary living.3
Educational or language barriers faced by parents or guardians responsible for reporting them. While resources exist for individuals whose first language is not English — the Census Bureau currently provides support in 12 languages online, by phone, or by mail, and offers language guides in 59 non-English languages to help people complete the English questionnaire — these efforts must be paired with increasing awareness of their availability.4
Fear and safety concerns. While there are laws that protect the data that individuals provide through the census, and those laws are enforced by criminal provisions, they may not provide meaningful reassurance to vulnerable populations who fear real-life consequences that could uproot their lives.5 Over the years, the politicization of the census has undermined the perception that it is an objective statistical tool. This has created challenges for all levels of government in obtaining an accurate count, and has potentially cost states and communities federal funding they are entitled to.6
Spending Distribution of Census-Guided Children Programs
Of the 371 federal assistance programs operating in fiscal year 2023 that POGO identified, 70 were census-guided programs that supported children. These programs accounted for $792.77 billion in funds disbursed to all 50 states and Washington, DC, representing 35% of the total census-guided funding in FY 2023.
Out of those 70 children programs, Medicaid consistently remains the largest program with $610.15 billion having been allocated nationwide in FY 2023. The largest programs after Medicaid are the National School Lunch Program with $27.03 billion, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) with $18.44 billion, and Title I Grants to Local Education Agencies with $17.78 billion. These programs span different categories of spending, affecting the health and education of children.
Generally, larger states receive more federal funding than smaller states. There is more variation amongst smaller states that are similar in population size, where a state with a smaller population might receive more funding than a state with a slightly larger population. This could be due to demographic differences, miscounts, and more. For example, North Dakota received almost as much as New Hampshire in children’s program funding in FY 2023, despite New Hampshire’s population being 1.7 times larger than North Dakota’s.7
How Missed Dollars Can Affect Children
POGO found 70 census-guided programs that the federal government funds to provide services that benefit children. The following examples illustrate how the services those federal assistance programs provide affect different aspects of a child’s development and everyday life.
Health
Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are some of the largest federal assistance programs that provide children with health care. Both programs use the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP), which is formulated based on population data derived from the census.8 If there is a population miscount, it can directly influence the amount of funding a state receives.
Education
Programs such as the School Breakfast, National School Lunch, Special Education Grants to States, and the Universal Service Funds Schools and Libraries affect the academic environment. These funds ensure that students are fed, which can lead to improved educational outcomes, ensure students with special needs have additional resources, and provide classrooms and libraries with proper resources — such as internet — to support learning and to address possible geographic barriers.9
Public Safety
Programs such as the Child Abuse and Neglect State Grants and Delinquency Prevention Program provide at-risk youth with the resources and support to address barriers to healthy development and long-term success.10
Employment
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Youth and Reentry Employment Opportunities programs equip young people and formerly incarcerated individuals with the occupational skills, career guidance, and employment pathways necessary to disrupt systemic barriers and improve workforce outcomes.11
Community Efforts in Anticipation of the Next Decennial Census
Census miscounts (depending on the severity) can result in states and communities losing significant federal funding across many programs. Communities, especially those that are historically underserved, could experience financial shortfalls and are most vulnerable to barriers that make it more challenging to maximize federal dollars.
Preparation for a decennial census can begin before the previous census has even been conducted. For instance, the early planning phase for the 2030 census began in 2019. Currently, we are in the second half of census preparation, specifically the Development and Integration Phase, where the Census Bureau continues doing research, collects data from two different test sites, and refines its operational design.12 During this phase, advocates can take part in a public education campaign to promote participation and psychological safety, can form Complete Count Commissions to raise general awareness and encourage residents to respond to the census, and can increase state collaboration with and participation in census partnership programs. Also, states can invest in efforts to avoid a significant miscount by partnering with city leaders, or accounting for census efforts in the state budget.13
Tribal, local, and state governments may also prepare for and participate in census partnership programs, like the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) operations. LUCA is an opportunity for tribal, state, and local governments to review and update the Census Bureau’s address list for their geographic area prior to the 2030 census, which may improve the completeness and accuracy of the count. They can verify the accuracy of address lists and make any corrections or identify any missing information, including address additions, deletions, conversions, and spatial updates. LUCA stands out as one of the few opportunities for tribal, local, and state governments to directly improve census accuracy in their jurisdictions on a standardized, nationwide timeline.14
Methodology
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Federal Funds Information for States (FFIS)
The FFIS is an organization that tracks and analyzes more than 90% of federal funds flowing to state and local governments. The organization shared its FY 2023 spending data with POGO on the condition that program-specific spending amounts by state not be published. POGO sourced spending amounts for 7 programs from the FFIS data covering $16.79 billion, or about 2.1% of the funding tracked in this report.
Spending data for some federal assistance programs tracked by FFIS is split into sub-programs or activity areas. POGO combined these sub-program spending amounts into single spending totals in each state for each program.
USAspending.gov
The website USAspending.gov is the primary portal to access federal award data, including contracts, grants, direct payments, and loans. POGO sourced spending data for 19 programs from USAspending.gov covering $80.88 billion in spending, or about 10.2% of the funding tracked in this report.
For most programs, POGO used the place of performance for prime awards to calculate spending totals for each state; for five programs, recipient location was used instead of place of performance to identify the state location. These were programs for which the place of performance data did not include a specific state, likely because these programs awarded funds to intermediary entities such as banks or financial institutions that could potentially use the funds for activities beyond the state where they were located. POGO opted to use the state location of the recipients, as it was likely that is where most of these funds were used.
For programs that included loans and loan guarantees, POGO used the face value of those loans as the spending amount since it best represents that amount of assistance being provided.15
Assistance Listings
The Assistance Listings (previously the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance) is an annual government-wide compendium of federal programs, projects, services, and activities that provide assistance or benefits to the American public. POGO sourced FY 2023 spending totals for over $1.5 billion in spending, or about 0.2% of the funding tracked in this report.
POGO estimated state-level spending data for these 13 programs based on the total FY 2023 spending reported for each program and on the observed rate of spending in each state for the 274 census-guided programs for which detailed state spending data was available, which includes many programs that are not focused on children or youth. Both Medicare and Medicaid were excluded from the rate of spending calculation because the large spending amounts would significantly skew the average.
Agency Sources
Spending data posted by the agencies overseeing those programs were used to produce state specific allocation totals for many programs. These sources included agency-based award datasets, budget materials, program reports, and more. POGO sourced spending data for 31 programs from agency sources covering $693.6 billion in spending, or about 87.5% of the funding tracked in this report.
Medicaid
POGO sourced state-level spending data for Medicaid from “Exhibit 16: Medicaid Spending by State, Category, and Source of Funds, FY 2023 (millions)” from Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission’s MACStats: Medicaid and CHIP Data Book.16
For any questions on data sources or methodology, please contact POGO at [email protected]
