Abstract
In addition to specific inquiries about race and Spanish origin, the censuses of 1980 and 1990 included an open-ended question about ancestry, which replaced the question about parents’ place of birth that had been used since 1870. This paper examines findings from the new ancestry question from the perspective of measuring ethnicity. The question adds little information about Hispanics, racial minorities, or recent immigrants, who can be identified readily on the basis of other census inquiries. The ancestry question allows us to characterize the descendants of European immigrants, but because of ethnic intermarriage, the numerous generations that separate present respondents from their forebears, and the apparent unimportance of ancestry to many whites of European origin, responses appear quite inconsistent. In regard to these groups, we may now be in an era of optional ethnicity, in which no simple census question will distinguish those who identify strongly with a specific European group from those who report symbolic or imagined ethnicity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alba, Richard D. 1990. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Alba, Richard D. and Mitchell B. Chamblin. 1983. “Ethnic Identification among Whites.” American Sociological Review 48(2): 240–47.
Allen, James Paul and Eugene James Turner. 1988. We the People: An Atlas of America’s Ethnic Diversity. New York: Macmillan.
Choldin, Harvey M. 1986. “Statistics and Politics: The Hispanic Issue in the 1980 Census.” Demography 23(3): 403–18.
Farley, Reynolds. 1990. “Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. Census: An Evaluation of the 1980 Ancestry Question.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Population Studies Center. Unpublished report submitted to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division.
Farley, Reynolds and Walter R. Allen. 1987. The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America. New York: Russell Sage.
Fernandez, Edward W. 1975. Comparison of Persons of Spanish Surname and Persons of Spanish Origin in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Gans, Herbert. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (January): 1–20.
Glazer, Nathan and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. 1963. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gordon, Milton M. 1964. Assimilation in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Greeley, Andrew. 1974. Ethnicity in the United States: A Preliminary Reconnaissance. New York: John Wiley.
Hirschman, Charles. 1983. “America’s Melting Pot Reconsidered.” Annual Review of Sociology 9: 397–423.
Hutchinson, E. P. 1956. Immigrants and Their Children. New York: Wiley.
Jaffe, Abraham J., R. M. Cullen, and T. D. Boswell. 1980. The Changing Demography of Spanish Americans. New York: Academic Press.
Johnson, Charles E., Jr. 1974. “Consistency of Reporting of Ethnic Origin in the Current Population Survey.” Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Levin, Michael J. and Reynolds Farley. 1982. “Historical Comparability of Ethnic Designation in the United States.” Pp. 4–12 in Proceedings of the American Statistical Association: 1982. Social Statistics Section. Washington, DC: American Statistical Association.
Lieberson, Stanley. 1963. Ethnic Patterns in American Cities. New York: Free Press.
—. 1980. A Piece of the Pie: Black and White Immigrants since 1880. Berkeley: University of California Press.
—. 1988. “Unhyphenated Whites in the United States.” Pp. 159–80 in Ethnicity and Race in the U.S.A.: Toward the Twenty-First Century, edited by Richard D. Alba. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Lieberson, Stanley and Lawrence Santi. 1985. “The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns.” Social Science Research 14: 31–56.
Lieberson, Stanley and Mary C. Waters. 1986. “Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 487: 79–91.
—. 1988. From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage.
McKenney, Nampeo R., Reynolds Farley, and Michael J. Levin. 1983. “Direct and Indirect Measures of Ethnicity: How Different Definitions Affect the Size and Characteristics of Various Ethnic Groups.” Pp. 123–30 in Proceedings of the American Statistical Association: 1983. Social Statistics Section.
Morawska, Ewa. 1985. For Bread with Butter: Life-Worlds of East Central Europeans in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1890–1940. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Novak, Michael. 1972. The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics. New York: Macmillan.
Park, Robert E. 1914. “Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to the Negro.” American Journal of Sociology 19: 606–23.
Perlman, Joel. 1988. Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews. and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rieder, Jonathan. 1985. Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Smith, Tom W. 1980. “Ethnic Measurement and Identification.” Ethnicity 7: 78–95.
Snipp, C. Matthew. 1989. American Indians: The First of This Land. New York: Russell Sage.
Steinberg, Stephen. 1981. The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America. Boston: Beacon.
Thernstrom, Abigail. 1987. Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
U. S. Bureau of the Census. 1973a. Census of Population: 1970: PC(1)-D1. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.
—. 1973b. Census of Population: 1970: PC(2)-1A. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U. S. Bureau of the Census. 1982a. “Ancestry and Language in the United States: November, 1979.” Current Population Reports, Series P-23, No. 116 (March).
—. 1982b. Census of Population and Housing: 1980. Public Use Micro-data Sample. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.
—. 1983. Census of Population: 1980. PC80-SI-IO. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.
U. S. Bureau of the Census. 1987. The National Content Test of 1986 Tapefile.
Waters, Mary C. 1990. Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wright, Carroll Davidson and William C. Hunt. 1900. The History and Growth of the U.S. Census: 1790–1900. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Yinger, J. Milton. 1976. “Ethnicity in Complex Societies.” Pp. 197–216 in The Uses of Controversy in Sociology, edited by Lewis A. Coser and Otto N. Larsen. New York: Free Press.
Zunz, Olivier. 1982. The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit: 1880–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Farley, R. The new census question about ancestry: What did it tell us?. Demography 28, 411–429 (1991). https://doi.org/10.2307/2061465
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2061465