The Appalachian Voice – Money and power. Read article.
Those are the stakes for residents of Appalachia as the U.S. Census Bureau conducts the 2020 decennial census — which will help determine how roughly $1 trillion in federal funding is distributed over the next 10 years as well as which states lose congressional representatives and which gain them.
“The Census count guides federal funding for more than 300 programs,” says Kelly Allen, West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy’s director of policy engagement. Those programs include school lunches, food stamps, children’s health insurance, Head Start, Medicare, Medicaid and the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, among other services such as roads.
