If you haven’t mailed back your Census Questionnaire, please do it today! Census data determine how more than $400 billion in Federal funds are distributed to communities each year. Mailing back a questionnaire is cheap, but in-person enumeration is expensive: if everyone across the nation mailed back their form, taxpayers could reduce the cost of taking the census by about $1.5 billion.

How well is your community doing in the 2010 Census? With the Census Bureau’s interactive ‘Take 10 Map,’ you can track how well your community is participating in the Census by seeing what percentage of households have mailed back their forms. The map is updated every day as questionnaires are returned, and allows you to compare your community’s performance this decade to how well it did in 2000.  View the Take 10 Map online.

You can also see how Pennsylvania is doing.  View Pennsylvania’s daily participation rate online at the PA Census 2010 site; the Data Center has also been creating a weekly county-by-county map of census participation rates (just click on ‘Participation Rates’). You can view the map, download a PDF copy, or download the data for states, counties, municipalities or census tracts. This map will be updated every Wednesday while the Census is ongoing.