Home movie audiences had an opportunity to purchase the movie on video tape for wino casino 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.
The concept of “diversity” we use refers to the representation and relative size of different racial and ethnic groups within a population and is maximized when all groups are represented in an area and have equal shares of the population. In this America Counts story on racial and ethnic diversity, we cross-tabulate the race and Hispanic origin statistics, as data users often do, such as with the 2020 Census redistricting tables. 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. 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. These demographic changes as well as improvements to the ways in which race and ethnicity data are collected and processed reveal the U.S. population is more racially and ethnically diverse than measured in 2010.

• 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%).
• The population under age 18 was 31.0% of the total population in 1950 and would grow to 34.3% in 1970.
• A value close to 1 indicates that almost everyone in the population has different racial and ethnic characteristics.
• The largest Irish population (567,668) was in Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago.
• Another of the films stars was often recognized by children who ran away crying!
• 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.
• A value of 0 indicates that everyone in the population has the same racial and ethnic characteristics.

Changes in Relative Rankings of Cities

Studio executives worried that the film would be a box office flop, so they decided to “quietly” premiered the movie at theaters in Oconomowoc, WI, Kenosha, WI, and Dennis, MA. 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. Frank Baum’s popular 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Much to their delight, the film was a hit as moviegoers packed theaters.
Similarly, we do not see the same large increase in the Multiracial non-Hispanic population from 2010 to 2020 using these cross-tabulated categories. This is because the vast majority (94%) of responses to the race question that are classified as Some Other Race alone are from people of Hispanic or Latino origin identifying as “Mexican,” “Latino” and other Hispanic origin groups. We know that cross tabulating the race and Hispanic origin categories yields a relatively small Some Other Race alone non-Hispanic population. The 1997 OMB standards emphasize that people of Hispanic origin may be of any race. The improvements and updates enabled a more thorough and accurate depiction of how people self-identify, yielding a more accurate portrait of how people report their Hispanic origin and race within the context of a two-question format.
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.
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. In Texas, the first- and second-most prevalent group rankings did not change between 2010 and 2020, but the difference in size between the White alone non-Hispanic population (39.7%) and the Hispanic or Latino population (39.3%) shrank to 0.4 percentage points. In Wisconsin, the Hispanic or Latino population (7.6%) became the second-most prevalent group, surpassing the Black or African American alone non-Hispanic population (6.2%). You can explore the Diversity Index for all states and counties by interacting with the data visualization.
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 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.

• At the time of his death on September 24, 1991, “Dr. Seuss” had sold more than 600 million copies of books that had been translated into dozens of languages for children around the world to enjoy.
• The concept of “diversity” we use refers to the representation and relative size of different racial and ethnic groups within a population and is maximized when all groups are represented in an area and have equal shares of the population.
• The graphics show the top 15 most popular surnames and those with the largest increase and rank.
• In some of these cities, the population began climbing again in recent decades.
• By 2020 Phoenix’s population would reach 1.6 million, making it the country’s fifth largest city.

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).

For Immediate Release: Thursday, December 15, 2016

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).
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.

Households and Families

The Census Bureau acts as the collection agent for these surveys, but the data themselves are available through the sponsoring agency. The Census Bureau collected data about libraries—like the public library in Universal City, Texas (pictured above)—as reimbursable projects for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). He also edited President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s official papers, served as West Virginia’s secretary of state, and served in the U.S. His 1957 book The Bridge at Remagen was made into a movie in 1969. He published the first Ilocan language translation of Don Quixote, wrote novels, plays, and founded the Ilokanos Writers Association of the Philippines.Author and historian Ken Hechler worked for the Census Bureau’s population division during the 1940 Census.

History and the Census: Theodor Seuss Geisel and Children’s Literature

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.
The largest German alone population was in Pennsylvania — 1,112,662, or 11.4% of the state’s White alone population. Texas had the largest English alone population (over 2.1 million) (Table 1). The German alone population was the largest in 10 states, the Italian alone population in four, and the Irish alone population only in Massachusetts. The English alone population was the largest detailed White group nationally, in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. French Canadian and Canadian were the two largest detailed groups in the “Other White” population, with their alone or in any combination populations each exceeding half a million.

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.

Differences by Race and Hispanic Origin

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.
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.