Classification of Selected Religious and Ethnoreligious Groups in the U.S. Census: 1980-2015

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 19. Race/Ethnicity and Religion

Abstract

In the mid-1900’s, there were several proposals to add a question asking “What is your religion?” to the decennial census; however these proposals were ultimately unsuccessful. Since 1976, the Census Bureau has been prohibited by law from collecting data on religious affiliation in its surveys or the decennial census on a mandatory basis. Although the Census does not ask for religious affiliation, when responding to the Census Bureau’s questions on ancestry, race, and ethnicity, some respondents provide religious or ethnoreligious responses. Religious responses such as Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cannot be coded and tabulated, but ethnoreligious responses such as Sikh, Copt, or Amish have been coded and tabulated in some surveys and censuses as responses to the questions on ancestry and race. This paper examines how selected ethnoreligious terms were classified racially and ethnically by the Census Bureau from 1980 to 2015 using data from the race and ancestry coding manuals.

Author

• Rachel Marks, U.S. Census Bureau