Census Bureau Releases 2020 Census Population for More Than 200 New Detailed Race and Ethnicity Groups (original) (raw)

Today's release of new 2020 Census data provides population counts of nearly 1,500 race and ethnicity groups and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) tribes and villages.

Some of the most noticeable improvements include the addition of White and Black or African American write-in areas on the questionnaire and the tabulation of detailed Some Other Race responses. These improvements allowed us to provide counts for groups that did not receive data from the race question in previous censuses.

More than 350 million detailed responses to the race and ethnicity questions were collected in the 2020 Census — six times more than in the 2010 Census due to improvements to the race and Hispanic or Latino origin (referred to as Hispanic origin) questions design, data processing and coding procedures.

Some of the most noticeable improvements include the addition of White and Black or African American write-in areas on the questionnaire and the tabulation of detailed Some Other Race responses. These improvements allowed us to provide counts for groups that did not receive data from the race question in previous censuses.

As a result, detailed data are now available for 104 White groups (Dutch, Lebanese, etc.), 62 Black or African American groups (Congolese, Grenadian, etc.) and 22 Some Other Race groups (Brazilian, Belizean, etc.).

The 2020 Census also marks the first time we are releasing data for regional groups, including Middle Eastern and North African, Caribbean, Sub-Saharan African, Polynesian and more.

The Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A) released today provides population counts for:

In this release, detailed groups reported in the race question have both “alone” and “alone or in any combination” counts.

The “alone” count represents the minimum number of people who identified as that detailed group, and includes respondents with only one response, such as Hungarian.

The “alone or in any combination” count represents the maximum number of people who identified as that detailed group. It includes respondents with only one response, such as Hungarian, and those with multiple, such as Hungarian and Romanian or Hungarian and Black or African American.

This information is important to frame the discussion of racial and ethnic composition and help us understand our country’s changing demographics as the nation becomes much more multiracial.

Following the 1997 Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity [PDF <1.0 MB], only a single response was tabulated in response to the Hispanic origin question.

With the inclusion of new write-in areas, we were able to tabulate detailed responses for all major race categories for the first time.

The Mexican population (35.9 million) was the largest detailed Hispanic origin group in 2020 (Table 7). The next largest were Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Cuban and Dominican.

The data visualization shows the size and rankings of even more detailed race and ethnicity groups for the nation, states and counties.

In addition to the new detailed White, Black or African American, Some Other Race and regional groups, there were improvements to the code list and tabulations to ensure more detailed Asian, NHPI, AIAN and Hispanic origin groups were available in 2020. These updates include:

We understand the critical importance of providing disaggregated data for myriad population groups, and the goal of this release is to provide as much data at various geography levels for as many detailed racial and ethnic groups and AIAN tribes and villages [XLS <1.0 MB] as confidentiality protections will allow.

To achieve this, the Detailed DHC-A uses an adaptive design [PDF 10.6 MB] to determine the amount of data published based on population size and geography level:

Data comparisons between the 2020 Census and 2010 Census race data should be made with caution, taking into account the improvements we have made to the race question and the ways we code what people tell us.

Some of these improvements include differences in how race groups were tabulated in 2010 compared to 2020. For example:

However, the detailed Hispanic origin data from the ethnicity question are comparable between the two censuses.

For similar updates, data users can reference the Detailed Race and Ethnicity Crosswalk: 2010 to 2020 [XLS <1.0 MB], the 2010 Census Hispanic or Latino Origin and Race Code Lists [PDF 4.5 MB] and the 2020 Census Hispanic Origin and Race Code List [XLS <1.0 MB] for how specific groups were coded in both censuses.

The Detailed DHC-A is unlike other data products most data users are familiar with, such as the American Community Survey (ACS) and previous decennial census releases.

To help data users get the most out of the Detailed DHC-A data, the technical documentation [PDF 10.6 MB] includes guidance on topics such as:

The technical documentation [PDF 10.6 MB] also discusses some of the known inconsistencies data users may encounter when using the Detailed DHC-A and provides details about the privacy protections implemented to ensure confidentiality.