There is more variation in the map for wino casino the second-most prevalent racial or ethnic group. Figures 2 and 3 show the most and second-most prevalent racial or ethnic groups by county in 2020. In West Virginia, the Multiracial non-Hispanic population (4.0%) became the second-most prevalent group, surpassing the Black or African American alone non-Hispanic population (3.6%). This calculation tells us how diverse and “diffused” the population is relative to the largest groups.

• In a 1975 episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Hamilton said of the Wicked Witch, «Sometimes, Mister Rogers, I’m a little unhappy because lots of children are quite scared by her.»
• We do plan to continue researching how using alternative racial and ethnic categories may inform the diversity measures and share these findings in future publications.
• Get an alert directly in your inbox to read, share and blog about our newest stories.
• The White alone non-Hispanic population was the most prevalent racial or ethnic group for all states except California (Hispanic or Latino), Hawaii (Asian alone non-Hispanic), New Mexico (Hispanic or Latino), and the District of Columbia, a state equivalent (Black or African American alone non-Hispanic).
• Movie audiences watched as a farm girl played by Judy Garland is swept away by a tornado from the black and white plains of Kansas to dazzling color in the Land of Oz.
• Although there is a great deal of diversity in the detailed White groups, many of the largest groups are also broadly distributed across the United States.

In Hawaii County, Hawaii, there was a 77.7% chance that two people chosen at random were from different racial or ethnic groups. Again, the way to interpret the DI is that there was a 73.7% chance in Prince William County, Virginia, that two people chosen at random were from different racial or ethnic groups. We explored using alternative racial and ethnic categories for our analysis but found that they did not have a substantial impact on the overall results. The most prevalent racial or ethnic group for the United States was the White alone non-Hispanic population at 57.8%. In data tables, such as the 2020 Census redistricting data tables that provide Hispanic origin by race statistics, we often cross-tabulate the race and Hispanic origin categories to display Hispanic as a single category and the non-Hispanic race groups as categories summing up to the total population. Expectations of what it means for a population to be racially and ethnically diverse may differ.
Get an alert directly in your inbox to read, share and blog about our newest stories. For more information on how the Census Bureau collects, codes and tabulates statistics on Hispanic or Latino origin and race, explore our 2020 Census subject definitions pages and the 2020 Census Redistricting Technical Documentation. Get tips and tricks on how to access, visualize and use Census Bureau data. In contrast, the District of Columbia’s Black or African American alone non-Hispanic population was 50.0% and the White alone non-Hispanic population was 34.8% in 2010, a difference of 15.2 percentage points.
The 2020 Census used the required two separate questions (one for Hispanic or Latino origin and one for race) to collect the races and ethnicities of the U.S. population — following the standards set by the U.S. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. A decennial census is, after all, a collection of data on every individual in the United States. By 2020, Aurora’s population had skyrocketed to around 386,000, making it the 51st largest city in the country surpassing Cleveland (population around 373,000), then ranked 54th. For instance, Cleveland in 1950 had about 915,000 people and was the nation’s seventh-largest city.
The story was much the same in Las Vegas, whose population ballooned from just over 24,000 people in 1950 to 642,000 in 2020. By 2020 Phoenix’s population would reach 1.6 million, making it the country’s fifth largest city. Phoenix had just over 100,000 people in 1950 and ranked 99th in population among cities. By 2020, the share of the county’s population in Chicago had fallen to 52%. By 1970, as suburbanization boomed, that share had slipped to 61% and Chicago’s population had declined somewhat.

• By 2000, 80.3% of the nation’s population lived in metro areas, with fully 50% in suburbs and 30.3% in central cities.
• In hindsight, we can now see that on many demographic fronts the U.S. population in 1950 looked more like the country in 1940 than the rapidly growing, youthful nation to come in 1960 or 1970.
• For the first time ever, respondents to the 2020 Census who reported White as a race could write in more details such as Italian, Palestinian or Cajun.
• For the District of Columbia, the difference in the size of the Black or African American alone non-Hispanic population (40.9%) and the White alone non-Hispanic population (38.0%) narrowed dramatically in 2020 with only a 2.9 percentage point difference.
• This differs from 2010, when the largest racial or ethnic group in California was the White alone non-Hispanic population, whose share declined from 40.1% in 2010 to 34.7% in 2020.
• Or it might be the first census showing an African American family from the rural South living in an urban neighborhood in the Northeast or Midwest, or a family from the rural Midwest living in California.

Census Bureau released the country’s 1,000 most common surnames by race and Hispanic origin and those that occurred 100 or more times in the 2010 Census.
The addition of a new write-in area for collecting detailed White responses was one of the improvements made to the 2020 Census race question design. Among those who identified as White alone or in combination, English (46.6 million), German (45 million), and Irish (38.6 million) were the largest groups. Together, the English (46.6 million), German (45 million), and Irish (38.6 million) alone or in any combination populations made up over half of the White alone or in combination population in 2020. For the first time ever, respondents to the 2020 Census who reported White as a race could write in more details such as Italian, Palestinian or Cajun. Reimbursable surveys conducted for the National Center for Education Statistics—like the National Teacher and Principal Survey—collect data on the number of schools with libraries and media centers. For example, the Surveys for the Institute of Museum and Library Services collected data from more than 9,000 libraries in 2022.

Census Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A on America Counts

English alone or in any combination was the largest detailed White group in approximately two-thirds (2,050) of the counties in the United States and Puerto Rico. The Italian alone population was concentrated in New York and New Jersey. The next largest groups were Pennsylvania German, Cajun, and Australian (Figure 2). An additional 11 detailed White alone or in any combination groups had at least 1 million people, including Swedish (3.8 million), Norwegian (3.8 million), and Dutch (3.6 million) (Figure 1). Middle Eastern and North African responses, such as Lebanese, Iranian, and Egyptian, represented over 1% of the White alone and White alone or in combination populations.

U.S. Population More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Than Measured in 2010

Home movie audiences had an opportunity to purchase the movie on video tape for the first time in 1980. Frank Baum’s Oz-themed novels have sold since the 1939 premier, and the books and movie remains very popular as new generations are introduced to the story. The Wizard of Oz faced fierce competition at the box office and awards ceremonies, as 1939 is considered to be one of the finest years for movies. Much to their relief, the movie studio executives were able to incorporate these audiences’ reactions into the movie’s worldwide advertising.

County-Level Findings

Fearing the film would be unpopular, movie studio executives chose these cities to debut the movie to better gauge audience reaction. On August 11–12, 1939, the movie The Wizard of Oz premiered in Dennis, MA, Kenosha, WI, and Oconomowoc, WI. In 2021, spending at movie theaters and streaming content at home and on mobile devices reached $36.8 billion. When the movie The Wizard of Oz premiered in August 1939, 85 million Americans watched movies in theaters and spent $659 million every week. Education is one of many topics covered by the survey and the data are not designed to provide a highly detailed look at the many different types of educational arrangements and innovations pursued by households in this unusual school year. Among the 15 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), for example, the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH MSA, went from 0.9% in the spring of 2020 to 8.9% by the fall.
But in the coming decades, nearly all increases in the metropolitan share of the population would stem from growth in the suburbs. The share of the population in metro areas was 56.1% in 1950, with 32.8% in central cities and 23.3% living in suburbs. Of the nation’s 10 largest cities in 1950, only New York and Los Angeles would have bigger populations in 2020. The Technical Documentation PDF 10.6 MB provides more information on data quality and how the Census Bureau collects, codes and tabulates statistics on race and Hispanic or Latino origin. Although there is a great deal of diversity in the detailed White groups, many of the largest groups are also broadly distributed across the United States. The county with the largest Norwegian population (135,077) was Hennepin, Minnesota, which includes Minneapolis.
Here, we see results that are not as impacted by the race reporting patterns of Hispanic or Latino respondents. Building upon our research over the past decade, we improved the design of the two separate questions and updated our data processing and coding procedures for the 2020 Census. Visit the Census Bureau’s Genealogy page to see frequently occurring surnames from previous censuses. The graphics show the top 15 most popular surnames and those with the largest increase and rank.

Differences by Metro Area

Italian was the largest group in several counties in New Jersey and the Long Island area of New York. German was the largest group in over 1,000 counties, particularly in the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and parts of Texas, including the Texas Hill Country. The English population was the most prevalent group in northern New England, the South, and throughout the West, as well as in Puerto Rico (Figure 4).

Other White responses, such as Canadian and Pennsylvania German, represented around 2% of the White alone and White alone or in combination populations. Detailed European responses accounted for 58.8% of the White alone and 56.1% of the White alone or in combination populations. About two-thirds of the White alone and White alone or in combination populations reported a detailed response, such as German, Irish, Lebanese or French Canadian.
The largest Italian population (360,345) was in Suffolk County, New York on Long Island. The largest Irish population (567,668) was in Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago. Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, had the largest English and German populations of all counties in the nation (620,199 and 639,586 respectively). Louisiana had the largest French alone population (136,390), or 5.1% of its total White alone population, followed closely by California (127,756), Massachusetts (111,502), Florida (107,687) and Texas (105,770). Illinois had the largest number of people who identified as Polish alone (352,882), followed by New York (274,580), Michigan (256,398), Pennsylvania (206,264), and Florida (160,119). California had the largest Irish alone population (803,899), followed by New York (730,165) and Florida (692,142).
There was an average of 3.51 people per household in 1950, substantially higher than the average of 2.61 in 2019. The population under age 18 was 31.0% of the total population in 1950 and would grow to 34.3% in 1970. In some of these cities, the population began climbing again in recent decades. In some cases, the population losses were sizeable, amounting to one half or more of the cities’ 1950 populations. The other eight (Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, St Louis, Washington, D.C., and Boston) all saw their decennial populations peak in 1950 and fall in the coming decades. A number of large industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest hit their peak decennial populations in 1950 and would experience population declines in subsequent decades in both relative and absolute terms.

Here we present highlights on racial and ethnic diversity from the 2020 Census and explain what each measure tells us about the nation’s population. The White alone non-Hispanic population was the largest — or most prevalent — racial or ethnic group for most counties in the United States. In 2020, the Hispanic or Latino population became the largest racial or ethnic group in California, comprising 39.4% of the total population, up from 37.6% in 2010. The remaining racial and ethnic groups combined to make up 11.4% of the total population, representing the diffusion score. The higher the score, the less concentrated the population is in the three largest race and ethnic groups. We also calculate the diffusion score, which measures the combined percentage of all racial and ethnic groups that are not in the first-, second- or third-largest racial and ethnic group.
In the 2020 Census, over 235 million people reported they were White alone or in combination with another race group, such as Black or African American. The alone or in any combination population includes those who reported one or more responses to the race question such as only Austrian or Austrian and German or Austrian and Asian. The alone population includes those who reported only one response to the race question, such as Austrian. As a result, data are now available from the decennial census for 104 detailed White groups, including Lithuanian, Irish, Libyan, Syrian, Pennsylvania Dutch and Australian.