Editing United States Census Bureau (section)

==== History ====
The first census was collected in 1790 and published in 1791.<ref name=":1" /> It was 56 pages and cost $44,377.28.<ref name=":1" />

The current system was introduced for the 1910 census, but other ways of grouping states were used historically by the Census Bureau. The first of these was introduced after the 1850 census by statistician and later census superintendent [[J. D. B. De Bow]]. He published a compendium where the states and territories were grouped into five "great divisions", namely the Middle, New England, the Northwestern, the Southern, and the Southwestern great divisions. Unsatisfied with this system, De Bow devised another one four years later, with states and territories grouped into an Eastern, Interior, and Western "great section", each divided into a northern and southern half called "divisions".

In the following decades, several other systems were used, until the current one was introduced in 1910. This system has seen only minor changes: New Mexico and Arizona were both added to the Mountain division upon statehood in 1912, the North region was divided into a Northeast and a North Central region in 1940, Alaska and Hawaii were both added to the Pacific division upon statehood in 1959, and the North Central region was renamed the Midwest in 1984.<ref>[https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/GARM/Ch6GARM.pdf Statistical Groupings of States and Counties] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220129035331/https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/GARM/Ch6GARM.pdf |date=January 29, 2022 }} (PDF)</ref>