| Abstract |
The Statistical Abstract is the single most useful reference book containing vital statistics on the United States. It is compiled by the Bureau of the Census and has been updated annually since 1878. It provides an extensive selection of statistics for the United States, with selected data for States, metropolitan areas, cities, and foreign countries from reports and records of government and private agencies. Issued annually, this reference work is the government's most important statistical factbook on the social, political, and economic aspects of American life. The 2001 edition contains almost 1,500 tables and graphs and 78 new tables covering topics such as public school building conditions, charter schools, distance education, prescription drug sales, income-tested benefits, employment projects, household debt, mutual fund ownership, hazardous material shipments, firearms manufactures, and e-commerce sales. Although the book's emphasis is on national data, many tables present figures for regions and individual States. Should the reader need further information, the Statistical Abstract furnishes titles of additional statistical publications and sources. This year we have added a new section which includes Census 2000 Sample Data. The 30 new tables in this section include data covering the educational attainment, disability status, ancestry of and language spoken at home by the resident population, as well as household income, poverty and selected housing characteristics. The layout of Appendix III has been revised. In this edition, Appendix III has been organized by the source agency and title of the survey rather than by section and table number in which the survey data appeared, as was the format in earlier editions. In addition to the above, we have introduced 49 new tables throughout our core sections. These cover a variety of topics including unmarried households, state children's health insurance programs, limitation of activity level caused by chronic conditions, characteristics of home-schooled students, computer use by children, firearm use offenders, home-based work and flexible schedules by workers, employee benefits in private industry as well as computer and internet use. For a complete list of new tables see Appendix VI, page 942. |
