Spotlight on Heterogeneity The Federal Standards for Racial and Ethnic Classification (1996) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Current Categories and Anomalies
Current Categories and Anomalies
Pages 21-34
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 21... ...
Even with the write-in option, the nonresponse rates in the 1990 census were 2 percent for the race question, 10 percent for the Hispanic-origin question, and 10 percent for the ancestry question. For the approximately 5 million Americans about whom the race question was not answered, their race was imputed using the standard census "hot-deck" techniques for nonresponse.2 Of the 9.8 million people reported in the "other race" category, the Census Bureau estimates that some 97 percent were Hispanic.
|
From page 22... ...
: print tribe Eskimo Aleut Asian or Pacific Islander: Chinese To! r~p~no Hawaiian Korean Vietnamese Japanese Asian Indian Samoan ~uamanlan Other Asian or Pacific Islander: print race Other race: print race IS THIS PERSON OF SPANISH/ HISPANIC ORIGIN OR DESCENT?
|
From page 23... ...
There has been some research on different types of racial and ethnic classification. Experimental work has been done by the Census Bureau, which field tests 3Race codes included 75 multiple responses.
|
From page 24... ...
As noted, the 1990 race question preceded the Hispanic-origin question in the census, and since the race question lacks a box for Hispanic, many Hispanics checked the "other" category for race and then did not respond to the Hispanicorigin question. The Census Bureau has also field tested a survey with the questions reversed: it resulted in a higher response rate for the Hispanic-origin question and no increase in nonresponse on the race question (Martin et al., 1990~.
|
From page 25... ...
For example, data for demographic estimates at the national level come from vital statistics collected by individual states, which may use different race and ethnicity categories from Directive 15 and from each other. Often, the census is used as the principal source of numbers for the denominators, which can lead to systematically poor estimation if the collection procedures used for the numerator data 5Data from recent censuses shows that the latter category of Hispanics with American Indian ancestry is quite large: in 1990, 8.4 percent of people who self-identified as American Indian by race also checked Hispanic origin.
|
From page 26... ...
Their reliance on visual identification or possibly inadequate information from relatives has resulted in an overassignment of deaths to black and white categories and an underassignment of deaths to American Indian and Asian and Pacific Islander categories (Hahn, 1993~. As shown in Table 4, with the pre-1989 algorithm for parents of the same race, almost 10 percent of American Indian infant deaths were incorrectly classified even when both parents were American Indians, and the inconsistent assignment of Asian infant deaths varied from almost 20 percent for Japanese to almost 40 percent for Chinese.
|
From page 27... ...
For the smaller racial and ethnic groups, however, the underreporting of infant mortality is quite large. Race- and ethnicity-specific life-expectancy calculations, relying on these infant mortality rates, will produce inaccurate results and have major ramifications for calculations made by Social Security and private insurance industry actuaries, among others.
|
From page 28... ...
Since infant deaths are relatively rare events about 1 percent of all births even minor inconsistencies in the classification of deaths may have a major impact on the rates. The third factor is that intermarriage is more common for American Indians, Asians, and Hispanics than for blacks and whites; hence, a higher proportion of children with an American Indian, Asian, or Hispanic mother have a father of a different ancestry (usually white)
|
From page 29... ...
In addition, federal laws and government-to-government relations vary across American Indian tribes, Alaskan Natives, and native Hawaiians. The current directive defines an American Indian or Alaskan Native as "a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America, and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition." Significantly, this definition is the only one of the five race and ethnicity categories that includes cultural identification, raising the issue of how to classify someone with Native American ancestry who does not identify culturally with that group.
|
From page 30... ...
Except for the census, which is based on self-identification, American Indians face more stringent standards of proof of racial and ethnic status than individuals of other groups in a variety of settings. For example, General Motors requires written proof of tribal membership for reporting of federal and state equal employment opportunity records.
|
From page 31... ...
In an analysis of data from the CPS, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the category of Alaskan Native is subject to misinterpretation if respondents are allowed to self-identify. Persons born in Alaska or who have resided there for an extended time period sometimes come to think of themselves as "Alaskan Natives," even though their ancestors are not indigenous people.7 Native Hawaiians Native Hawaiians are currently categorized as Asian and Pacific Islanders in Directive 15, but the state of Hawaii has its own special race and ethnicity reporting formats because of its demographic composition.
|
From page 32... ...
More than 25 percent of those reporting their race as American Indian report a non-American Indian ancestry, and about 10 percent of Asian and Hispanic respondents report a non-Asian or non-Hispanic ancestry, respectively. These results support the contention that a significant minority of the population, arranged by current Directive 15 categories, in fact might report multiple ancestries if it was offered.
|
From page 33... ...
Historically, however, size has not been the sole criterion for adding a category. For example, according to the 1990 census there were more people of Swedish ancestry than Asian or American Indian ancestry, but no one proposes that Swedish be a new, separate ethnic category.
|
From page 34... ...
, researchers can identify the socioeconomic characteristics of emerging groups on a national and sometimes even a local basis. Finally, it is important to note that some new categories can be incorporated easily under the current directive as subcategories of the broader racial and ethnic groups.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.