made about them may err. Second and more important, such projections would have missed the subsequent changes in the social meaning and functioning of the ethnic groups themselves. These changes are discussed in detail in Chapter 8.

As these findings make clear, the ethnic affiliation of Americans in the future is subject to some uncertainty. Today, many people have parents and grandparents who are of the same ethnic origin, using the broad racial and Hispanic groups current today. But a substantial and growing number have links to two or more ethnic ancestries, allowing wide latitude in how they may choose to identify themselves.

To display this blurring of single and multiple ethnic linkages, Table 3.9 displays estimates for single and multiple-ancestry of the current and future U.S. population. Of the 8.8 million persons in 1995 whose primary ethnic identification was Asian, the vast majority (8.1 million) had only Asian ancestry. In addition, there were another 1.5 million persons who reported some Asian ancestry—of whom only 0.7 million self-reported that they were Asian. The net result is that in 1995 there were an additional 800,000 persons who had some Asian an-