BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — More than 2,000 temporary Census Bureau employees have hit the streets and back roads of Louisiana to kick off the 2010 census by verifying and updating residential addresses.
Jeff Behler, deputy regional director for the U.S. Census Bureau’s Dallas office, says the address canvassing is the bureau’s first official field operation for the 2010 census.
Behler says the primary goal of the census is to determine population and to provide demographic data such as age, gender and ethnicity.
He said the results of the census are about power and money.
The power stems from the data being used in the reapportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The money involves more than $300 billion in federal funds distributed annually to state and local governments for such things as roads and schools.
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