A little-known yearly survey conducted by the Census Bureau gathers a wealth of information that helps guide everything from investments in highways and schools to business decisions about building supermarkets and department stores. The American Community Survey gathers neighborhood-level data that isn’t collected in the decennial Census, providing invaluable information about issues from immigration to income levels. Losing that ground-level view of the changes in American life year after year would be disastrous, says Senior Fellow William Frey.