Editor’s note: The American Community Survey (ACS) release has been delayed. As you plan your work in September, you may need to revise any plans around drawing attention to poverty and access to health insurance in your community—and help uplift the challenges of the delayed ACS.

Historically, the Census Bureau has released three related sets of data in September that address income, poverty, and health insurance. We advocates have referred to this as “Poverty Day” and CHN has held a webinar in advance of the release to help advocates prepare to draw attention to the new data.  

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau announced that two of these datasets, the CPS-ASEC and Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) will be released on Tuesday, September 15, but the American Community Survey will be delayed because they need to modify it to comply with the recent Commerce Department order on privacy. We have blogged about the dangers of that order and shared a blog on the impact on health programs.  

Although the Census Bureau apparently hopes to release the ACS later this year, we do not know when we will get it. This matters because the ACS has most accurate information on state poverty and access to health insurance, and the only information on poverty and health insurance for smaller geographies.  

The one year ACS data is collected between January and December of the year, so the data that is being delayed would cover January to December 2025. We are deeply concerned that we will not get timely information on our communities and how they have been affected by the vast number of major policy actions taken by the Trump administration during this period, which has seen so much economic disruption that may have pushed more people into poverty and cut them off from health insurance.  

Another concern about this delay is that the ACS is often used to allocate federal funding for programs. Depending on when the ACS is finally released (and when Congress passes final funding for programs), this may mean that some programs will have to use other data to allocate federal funds when they are appropriated. When the ACS was not released in the pandemic, a number of agencies used prior year data. If that happens this time, it will hurt communities that are growing, which will get less than their intended share of federal funds.  

So what can you do around “Poverty Day” this year?  

The Supplemental Poverty Measure remains invaluable for showing how important key human needs programs are for reducing poverty. For example, the release of the SPM is always a great time to lift up how important programs such as SNAP and tax credits are.  

The CPS-ASEC provides the official national poverty number, as well as national numbers on income and health insurance. The Supplemental Poverty Measure looks at these topics after near-cash supplements such as tax credits and SNAP benefits are included, and additional costs of living such as child care and work expenses are added in. Both provide some state data, but neither goes lower than the state.  

If you want to get a sense of what they offer, you can find last year’s CPS-ASEC report here and last year’s Supplemental Poverty Measure here.  

Note that the Census Bureau recommends using ACS, not CPS, state data, so if you do talk about the CPS data, you probably want to flag that you are still waiting for the ACS. You can also talk about how in past years you got data on your Congressional district, county, municipal area, or school district, but this time that data may be less precise or suppressed altogether when we do get it. The smaller your community, the more likely the data is to be coarsened or suppressed.  

This is also an important time to talk about how important the ACS data is and how deeply troubling it is that a Commerce Department order, undertaken without any opportunity for comment by experts, is making essential information delayed, less precise, and less available. To help you do that, the recording of our Wednesday webinar on the many uses of the ACS is here and the slides & resources are here. 

CHN will continue to pull together resources and webinars to help you analyze and respond to the release of the national data.