Census Bureau Delays Poverty Data Amid Medicaid, SNAP Cuts
The Census Bureau has indefinitely delayed its American Community Survey, a key dataset tracking state and local poverty, income, insurance and housing trends, just as deep federal safety-net cuts take hold. The bureau attributes the delay to a new Commerce Department order banning "noise infusion," a privacy-protection technique, though some scientists quoted in Science magazine suspect political motives. Researchers say the gap leaves them unable to measure the state-level impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and $187 billion in SNAP cuts, plus the expiration of ACA subsidies that caused Ohio's Medicaid-adjacent marketplace enrollment to drop 32.4%, the largest decline of any state. No new release date has been set.
State Medicaid agencies, advocates, and researchers lose a core tool for measuring coverage loss and poverty impacts from SNAP and ACA subsidy cuts just as those effects peak.
Finance · CHIP
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