Combined statistical area

Imagine you have a big group of friends who all live in different houses. Now, imagine you want to count how many people are in your group of friends.

One way you could do this is by counting the number of people in each house and adding them all up. But what if two of your friends live really close to each other and often do things together? Should you count them twice?

This is kind of like what happens when we look at cities and towns in the United States. Sometimes, there are places that are close to each other and have a lot of connections, like people who work in one place and live in another.

To make things easier for studying and planning, the U.S. government has created a way to group together these areas that are close to each other and share resources. They call these groupings "combined statistical areas."

By combining these areas, we can get a better idea of things like how many people live in an overall region, what kind of jobs people have, and other important information. It's like counting up all of your friends, including the ones who live close to each other, so you don't miss anyone.