Part-American Indians in Census 2000: Similarities and Contrasts with Part-American Indians in the 1990 Census

Carolyn A. Liebler, University of Minnesota

With the new “check all that apply” race question used in Census 2000 comes a vast change in the composition of some racial groups. The number of Americans who reported one of their races to be American Indian jumped from 1,937,391 in 1990 to 4,119,301 in 2000. Researchers may be tempted to assume that those 2,475,956 people in Census 2000 who reported “American Indian race only” are the same population as those who reported their race to be American Indian in the 1990 Census. I will conduct an empirical analysis of characteristics of all of the part-American Indian groups (by race and by ancestry) to test this and related assumptions using the the Census 2000 1% PUMS data. I will compare characteristics of various part-American Indian population groups in 1990 to the same characteristics of part-American Indian groups in 2000 to identify the areas of largest change for further investigation.