More detailed analysis shows that about half of black Hispanics are children under the age of 18.  What is the role of racially mixed parentage in the identification of these children as black Hispanics?  This question cannot be fully answered, because the majority of black Hispanic children do not live with both parents.  However, based on those cases where both parents are present, the microdata allow us to tabulate the race of the child along with the race of each parent. 

Table 4 presents the results for all Hispanic children under 18 who live with both parents.  A large majority of white Hispanic children have parents who are both white Hispanic (over 70%).  An even higher share of Hispanic Hispanic children have parents who are both Hispanic Hispanic (85%).  In contrast, it is rare that a black Hispanic child has two black Hispanic parents (only 31%).  For nearly half the black Hispanic children, one of the parents is non-Hispanic black.  In many of the remaining cases, one parent is identified as black Hispanic, while the other parent is white Hispanic or Hispanic Hispanic. 

This result suggests that intermarriage is the most important source of the black Hispanic population, with a strong likelihood of having a non-Hispanic black parent.  Research using non-census data sources would be required to assess to what degree the same is true for older black Hispanics. 

Geographic distribution

As would be expected – if only because of the differences by national origin – the Hispanic racial groups are unevenly distributed around the country.  Table 5 lists the six metropolitan regions with more than a million Hispanics and shows their racial composition (a more complete list of those with over 250,000 Hispanics is provided in the Appendix).