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Hispanics in the United States come from many different national origins. The largest number by far are Mexican, but a growing proportion in some parts of the country are those from the Dominican Republic and from Central and South America.
One question that we answer on these pages is "How many Hispanics from each
of the origins live in this area?" The answer is complicated by the fact
that the Census's "Hispanic origin" question in 2000 was reworded in a way
that led to a highly inflated number of uncategorized "other Hispanics." We
provide two different numbers for each group in 1990 and 2000: the Census
number from the Hispanic question and the Mumford Center's adjusted counts
(see "The New Latinos" report for details). In addition, the Census (May 4,
2003) has released its own revised estimates of the count for specific
Hispanic national origin groups in 2000, making use of additional
information on people's country of birth and reported ancestry.
(See
Working Paper #72 - Analysis of General Hispanic Responses in Census 2000 by
Arthur Cresce and Roberto Ramirez.) These counts are also reported here, and the Mumford Center
now recommends use of these revised census estimates.
The revised census estimates are based on sample data (SF3), which vary
randomly from the full count numbers reported in the past. For this reason,
although the estimation procedure in principle should never result in a
smaller count for a particular Hispanic group, there are some cases where
this occurs.
Data are reported for metropolitan regions and for the states. In the
future, data will also be provided separately for city and suburban portions
of metros and for all cities over 10,000 population.
SELECT A STATE OR METRO AREA TO SEE THE POPULATION COUNTS IN 1990 AND 2000.
Another question that we answer here is "How segregated are Hispanics with
different national origins?" The national average for segregation of
Hispanics from whites is 51.5 (Index of Dissimilarity, and it has been at
that level for the last two decades. But not every Hispanic group is
equally segregated: the average value for Dominicans is 73.7 (higher than
the average of black-white segregation), but for South Americans it is only
43.9 (about the same as Asians). The average Hispanic lives in a census
tract that is 45.5% Hispanic.
These indices are based on the Mumford estimates for each national-origin
category. To simplify these pages, we combine various national origins into
a Central American and a South American category. Persons interested in
specific groups will soon be able to download these data. We only provide
1990 segregation indices in specific metro areas for Dominicans, Central
Americans, and South Americans when the group had more than 50,000 persons.
This is because the 1990 counts are based on sample data from the Census,
and we believe they yield unreliable segregation scores where the numbers
are small.
SELECT A METRO AREA TO SEE THE SEGREGATION INDICES IN 1990 AND 2000 |
