Statistics are pulled from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS).

Starting with the 2000 Census, the Census Bureau allows respondents to indicate more than one race. This research report uses the major racial groups in the “alone or in combination with one or more races” category in the Census to include persons who identify with several racial or ethnic identities. For instance, mixed-race populations with Asian heritage are included in “Asian alone or in combination,” regardless of Hispanic origin. Therefore, there may be some overlap in the “alone or in combination” category. The population size of the major racial or ethnic groups alone or in combination is calculated for this study using information from the 2010 and 2020 decennial Censuses. The 2017-2021 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) are used to analyze major racial or ethnic groups (except for population size) and Asian ethnic groups. Since PUMS does not provide alone or in combination data for all the Asian ethnic groups, we use the alone Census category for these groups. For example, Chinese alone corresponds to the respondents who reported only Chinese and no other ethnic category. If a respondent selected Chinese and another racial group (e.g., Chinese and Black), that individual is excluded from the Chinese alone count. Alone should be considered the minimum population size in any analysis that uses Census Bureau data.

Currently, ACS reports 20 Asian ethnic groups, including Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese (except Taiwanese), Taiwanese, Filipino, Hmong, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Malaysian, Mongolian, Nepalese, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Thai, and Vietnamese. To maximize the reliability of our estimates, this data center includes groups with unweighted sample sizes larger than 200, with the exception of the Burmese. With a rapidly growing population of refugees, the Burmese are a notable and emerging Asian ethnic group. We also included Sri Lankans, as the unweighted sample size for this Asian group was close to that for Burmese.