From population growth to new businesses, today’s census drop matters to SC residents

Hoping a new grocery store opens closer to your home? Wishing your favorite fast food chain would come to your neighborhood? Wondering if your school will be able to fund new programs?

It may all come down to the massive amount of data being released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

University of South Carolina Professor Robert Oldendick said this week that he and other political scientists are watching the data closely because of what it will mean in the 2021 redistricting process.

Most of us, however, might not realize what the census data means in our day-to-day lives.

What federally-funded services will your local schools, hospitals, daycares and community centers receive? Which businesses will open and close in your town?

The treasure trove of information collected during the 2020 census will affect all of those things.

The data, collected in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, will be used to determine Congressional and Legislative district boundaries, which could alter your representation at the state and national level.

It will also be used to determine how federal dollars are spent in our 46 counties because many federal programs related to everything from housing to education and health care are connected to the size of the population and its demographic breakdown.

“These detailed characteristics (age, race, education) are used by local government planners to make budget decisions,” Oldendick said.

But beyond that, businesses look at census data to determine where their customers are, what areas are growing and where populations are declining. That can mean the opening of new stores and services and the closing of others.

“This is critical to businesses,” Oldendick said of the wealth of information coming out this week, a process that started with the first U.S. census in 1790.

At that time, the Census recorded the U.S. population at 3.9 million people. Two hundred years later, the figure was up to 248 million.

As of April 1, 2020, the population was up to 331 million.

Despite the growth in population, response figures have been on the decline, Oldendick said.

“We’ve seen a decline in trust in government,” he said, meaning people are less willing to participate in the census leaving some holes in the data.

In 2010, for instance, South Carolina’s response rate was 64.7 percent. That dropped to 61 percent in 2020.

But despite the challenges of the pandemic and lower response rates, the Census Bureau says the data coming out this Thursday gives a fuller picture of what the country looks like today.

“These data play an important role in our democracy and will begin to illuminate the changes to the local and demographic makeup of our nation over the last decade,” Census Bureau Acting Director Ron Jarmin said.

This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 11:00 AM.