News Release — Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released results showing how people who identify as being of Hispanic or Latino origin (referred to as the Hispanic population) self-reported their race in the 2020 Census.
The nonresponse rate to the race question for the Hispanic population decreased from 13.0% in 2010 to 8.1% in 2020, but there were major shifts in race reporting within the Hispanic population compared to the 2010 Census. The data show that the Hispanic population reporting one race decreased from over 81.6% in 2010 to less than 57.8% in 2020. Meanwhile, over one-third of the Hispanic population reported two or more races, up from 2.6 million people in 2010 to 18.6 million people in 2020.
These findings support previous Census Bureau research that found a large proportion of the Hispanic population does not identify with any of the current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) race categories; 43.6% of the Hispanic population either did not respond to the 2020 Census race question or reported being Some Other Race alone. (“Some Other Race” is not an OMB race category.)
OMB is currently soliciting public feedback on initial proposals for updating OMB’s race and ethnicity statistical standards, including a proposal to improve race and ethnicity data by using a single combined question in federal data collections. More information about the initial proposals, how to provide feedback and OMB’s process for revising the standards is available at https://spd15revision.gov. This release provides insight from the 2020 Census to inform discussions about Hispanic race reporting in the decennial census.
