First off, it is important to know that the House of Representatives are numbered based on the number of constituents in their state. The same goes for the Electoral College. Since these two very important groups of people are based on the number of constituents in each state, a count must be taken every ten years to determine how many people there actually are in each state, and in the United States in total. This is what the purpose of the U.S. Census is for. On every year that ends with a 0, an official count is taken of the number of people in each state. For all of the years in between, trends are used to make estimations and projections about the number of people there are.

Secondly, the U.S. Census is important for the purposes of distributing funds to the public. Taking a count of the people in the country helps the Federal government decide what areas of the population are in need of what services such as: welfare, housing projects, parks and other things mandated by the federal government.