Measuring Race in the United States

Claudette E. Bennett, U.S. Census Bureau

Over the past 30 years there has been growing concern about measuring the increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States. Beginning in 1950, the Census Bureau began using the “Other race” category to allow respondents of mixed racial parentage to racially identify. Since 1950, both the number and percent of people in this category has grown. This response category is not used in household surveys conducted by the Census Bureau, in making population projections and estimates, or by other federal agencies, resulting in problems of comparability of race data. In this paper, the author examines the racial distribution from the 2003 National Content Test (NCT) where two different formats of the question on race were used – one with a Some Other Race category and one without a Some Other Race category. The goal is to identify alternative ways for assigning race(s) when no information is reported.