# Statistical Abstract of the United States > [!note] Stub > This is a short entry that hasn't been fully written yet. For 133 years the [[Census Bureau]] published a single volume that pulled the country's official numbers together in one place — population, income, crime, health, transport, trade — with a source note under every table pointing back to the agency that produced it. For most of the twentieth century it was the standard way a reader without a research library could find a federal statistic. The Bureau ended it. Its own notice records that it "terminated the collection of data for the Statistical Compendia program effective October 1, 2011," and gives no reason. No statute was repealed and no rule was published; a program that had run since 1878 stopped on an effective date posted to a web page. A commercial publisher subsequently continued the title under licence, behind a subscription. ## Why it matters The Abstract is the clearest worked example of the quietest way a federal statistical product ends: not by a vote, but by an agency deciding it can no longer afford to compile one and saying so in a sentence. It is also what made the loss visible — because the volume existed, its absence could be noticed, which is not true of the individual tables that have since been dropped. ## See also - [[How a Statistical Agency Is Defunded or Discontinued]] — the eight routes by which a federal statistic stops, and which of them require a vote - [[Census Bureau]] — the agency that compiled it - [[Census Data Products Tree]] — what the census publishes now - [[Federal Statistical System Tree]] — the agencies whose figures the Abstract gathered