| Title |
The new census question about ancestry: What did it tell us?
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Demography, August 1991
|
| DOI | 10.2307/2061465 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Reynolds Farley |
| 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. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 1 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 19 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1 | 5% |
| Germany | 1 | 5% |
| Unknown | 17 | 89% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 6 | 32% |
| Student > Master | 3 | 16% |
| Professor > Associate Professor | 2 | 11% |
| Librarian | 1 | 5% |
| Student > Postgraduate | 1 | 5% |
| Other | 0 | 0% |
| Unknown | 6 | 32% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Social Sciences | 8 | 42% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 2 | 11% |
| Psychology | 1 | 5% |
| Unknown | 8 | 42% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 28. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 January 2024.
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#1,358,251
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#367
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#236
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Outputs of similar age from Demography
#2
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