Right before the holidays, the Pew Research Center published a very comprehensive analysis about Hispanic and Latino identity in the United States. According to the analysis, which was based on two surveys (a 2015 one that involved “1,500 self-identified Hispanic adults” and a 2015-2016 one that involved “401 U.S. adults who indicated they had Hispanic, Latino, Spanish or Latin American ancestry or heritage… but did not consider themselves Hispanic), Pew stated the following conclusions:
- “Among the estimated 42.7 million U.S. adults with Hispanic ancestry in 2015, nine-in-ten (89%), or about 37.8 million, self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. But another 5 million (11%) do not consider themselves Hispanic or Latino…”
- “The closer they are to their immigrant roots, the more likely Americans with Hispanic ancestry are to identify as Hispanic.”
- “By the third generation —a group made up of the U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parents and immigrant grandparents— the share that self-identifies as Hispanic falls to 77%.”
- “And by the fourth or higher generation (U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parents and U.S.-born grandparents, or even more distant relatives), just half of U.S. adults with Hispanic ancestry say they are Hispanic.”
The study also contained a lot of new findings that speak to the complexity (and controversy) of this issue. You can read Pew’s post here, and we also posted the full report below.
