Knowing what the actual population count in Connecticut is very important. Federal grants and funds are tied to the population counts. And when it comes time to draw up congressional districts, those population counts are important too. COnnecticut lost a congressional district in 2000 because of a lower population. The Courant reports:
Developing the state’s own population figures is part of the role of the Connecticut State Data Center, which began operating at the University of Connecticut with Rodriguez as director last July 1.
In its first report since then, released last month, the center says it found 127,472 people living in “group quarters” - dormitories, nursing homes, prisons and other institutions - in 2005, which is 11,926 more than the census estimate for that year. The difference amounts to about a third of a percent of Connecticut’s population, but even that can be worth millions of dollars in federal funding over time.
It’s worth keeping track of - and Connecticut hasn’t done that very well in recent years.
“The past has been kind of ugly,” said Fred Carstensen, a UConn economics professor who was instrumental in establishing the center at Storrs. The State Data Center has existed on paper since the 1980s, he said, but its staff in the state Office of Policy and Management dwindled over the years until no one was left. “We were really a data-challenged state in a lot of ways.”
The state needs accurate data for many of its functions, Carstensen said: planning schools and highways, projecting Medicare and social services needs, assessing development and workforce trends and the like. And the information is critical for obtaining federal funding.
“Most states have a state demographer - it’s not an uncommon thing,” he said. “Connecticut doesn’t.”
…
Tracking the state’s population is only part of the center’s role, Carstensen said. Ultimately he hopes to develop the ability to help towns identify and apply for federal grants to which they’re entitled - something other states do routinely. Aggressive pursuit of the grants could reap millions, he said.…
To develop their group-quarters estimate, Rodriguez said he and Coghlan put together a list of every institution in the state and called each one.
Their count found differences in 2005 data of as much as 4,460 in Hartford County and 3,618 in Fairfield County. On a town-by-town basis, the largest differences between the state’s 2005 count and the Census Bureau’s 2000 tally - the most recent local figure available - were 5,680 for Mansfield and 2,561 for Wesleyan, the homes of UConn and Wesleyan, respectively.
The numbers aren’t huge, but they can affect other statistics like per capita income, on which some grants and other revenue from state and federal governments are based.
source: Hartford Courant, State Aims Extra Eyes At Important Census Info By MICHAEL REGAN, April 2, 2007
