Research Implications of OMB’s Revised Race and Ethnicity Standards for the Latino Population

Collecting accurate data on race and ethnicity is critically important. It allows researchers to measure the size of our country’s diverse populations—including the more than 65 million people who identify as Hispanic—and to capture changes in these groups over time. It also allows researchers and policymakers to document the health and well-being of a range of racial and ethnic populations to assess where resources and supports are needed.

In March 2024, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) updated its standards on collecting and reporting data about race and ethnicity to apply across all federal offices. The updates are the first since 1997 and represent the culmination of OMB’s work with a wide range of experts tasked with formulating recommendations for improving the accuracy and relevance of federal race and ethnicity data. Broadly, the updated recommendations aim to address concerns that previous standards were confusing and did not accurately reflect the diverse racial and ethnic identities of the nation’s population, including its Latino people.

The updated standards will have wide-reaching implications for any individual or organization doing data-related work at the federal, state, and local levels, including the research conducted by the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (Center). The Center routinely uses large-scale federal data collections fielded by offices within agencies such as the U.S. Department of Commerce (e.g., Census Bureau) and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (e.g., Administration for Children and Families [ACF], the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, etc.). We also use administrative data collected by state agencies and by programs funded by the federal government (e.g., Head Start and TANF). And we field our own data collection efforts that include measures of race and ethnicity.

Below, we highlight some of the key changes in the updated standards that are most relevant to the Latino population and review key research implications of these changes.

1. The new standards call for one question to assess both race and ethnicity. Prior standards required that federal data collections use two separate questions to assess race and ethnicity, one of which asked about Hispanic ethnicity^a with the other asking about race. The updated standards require a single combined question that lists Hispanic alongside six race categories, for a minimum of seven response options: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Middle Eastern or North African, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and White. The question must include a statement that encourages people to identify as many responses as they would like (e.g., Hispanic and White; Hispanic and Black; Hispanic, Black, and Asian; etc.).
2. The revised standards also call for collecting more detailed data on race and ethnicity within each of the seven broader race and ethnic categories. The updated standards require data collectors to default to collecting more detailed data on race and ethnicity (see Figure 1 for a sample question) beyond the minimum seven categories, unless an exemption is granted. The Latino population in the United States has grown continuously since the 1970s; over this time, its composition has become more diverse by country of heritage. In 2020, individuals who traced their origins to Mexico made up the largest share of the Hispanic population (60%), followed by those who identified as Puerto Rican (9%), Salvadoran (4%), and Cuban (4%). In the past decade, however, shifts in immigration flows have meant that the fastest growing groups in the U.S. Latino population are those with origins in Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia (in that order). To better capture this diversity, Figure 1 demonstrates how the updated standards require that Hispanic or Latino respondents be offered a choice from among the following country of heritage categories: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, or another group (for the latter, respondents might enter Colombian, Honduran, Spaniard, etc.), with the first six groups representing the largest Hispanic groups in the United States.

Note: Adapted from Revisions to OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, by Federal Register, 2024 (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06469/revisions-to-ombs-statistical-policy-directive-no-15-standards-for-maintaining-collecting-and#page-22193). In the public domain.

3. The new standards also require updating the definition of American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) to more explicitly include individuals with origins in the Indigenous Peoples of Central America (in addition to North and South America) and remove the clause “who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.” This broader definition of AIAN acknowledges the rich diversity of Indigenous Peoples and cultures across North, Central, and South America, and helps ensure that no Indigenous group is excluded based on geographical boundaries. This change may lead to a more accurate measurement of the ancestral background of Latino individuals who identify as Indigenous or with mixed Indigenous heritage; indeed, research from 2014 found that 25 percent of Hispanic adults reported having Indigenous roots. The change will also have implications for those accustomed to using AIAN population counts generated under past guidance, regardless of whether counted individuals identified as Hispanic or Latino.^b

Discussion and Limitations

The updated standards—particularly the move to one combined question—align with research findings that many Latino individuals do not think of race and ethnicity as distinct concepts. Multiple studies have shown that the current two-question format often results in a response to the race question that does not align with the self-identification of many Latino individuals. In fact, analyses of data from the Census finds that an increasing proportion of Hispanics are checking the ‘some other race’ box and writing in a Hispanic origin or nationality as their race. The OMB is hopeful that the revisions will reduce the number of respondents who leave the race question blank or select ‘some other race’.

The OMB also hopes that its new guidance will allow people to select options that better reflect their own identity and enhance the accuracy and representation of distinct Latino subgroups. Census research suggests that these changes are likely to increase the proportion of Hispanics who identify as Hispanic alone, with no other race. However, people who responded to requests for public comment during the development of these updated recommendations raised concerns that the move to one question to measure race and ethnicity would result in a loss of data about the Afro-Hispanic community, particularly if respondents were not aware they can select multiple categories. While prior research suggests that estimates of the Afro-Latino population using one question are similar to those using the two-question approach, cognitive testing with members of the Afro-Latino community—carried out by the Federal Working Group that informed the OMB’s recommendations—suggests that a substantial portion of Afro-Latino individuals select “Hispanic only” using the one question approach (and not Black or African American), demonstrating continued limitations.

Additionally, any time federal standards for collecting and reporting data on race and ethnicity are updated, there are concerns about the comparability of data over time. For researchers like those of us at the Center, methodological challenges come into play, particularly when using repeated cross-sectional data sources to measure trends (e.g., the American Community Survey). Once the updated standards are adopted, actual data on race and ethnicity will look different than in prior years; notably, the updated guidance results in 127 possible race and ethnic categories compared to just 62 possible categories under the 1997 guidance. Researchers must exercise particular care when conducting analyses that span a change in how race and ethnicity are measured within the same data set. Methodological guidance put out by OMB details steps for agencies and other users of federal data to bridge the two different measures of race and ethnicity over time (i.e., map the 127 categories under the 2024 guidance to the 62 categories under the 1997 guidance, or vice versa), allowing us to continue examining trends in Hispanic child and family well-being. Work to build out methodological guidance will continue and be updated on the Federal Working Group’s webpage.

The new guidance involves yet another challenge. Research shows that a change in how a question is asked in a survey also impacts how people respond to it. That is, the same person may report a different race and ethnicity using one question format compared to another (hence why some are concerned about the potential loss of data—e.g., Afro-Latinos, as mentioned above). Over the next five years, as surveys and data collectors adopt the updated measure on race and ethnicity, researchers will need to carry out studies to assess how much of an issue this is—that is, whether/how much of any change in trend we see for any particular outcome (e.g., poverty rate, insurance coverage, academic achievement, etc.) is due to actual shifts in that outcome within a particular group (e.g., the Hispanic population), as opposed to a change in who identifies as a member of that group (e.g., whether more individuals will identify as both Hispanic and AIAN). This will be a particularly salient topic as federal statistics on race and ethnicity are used to help determine the allocation of federal resources to communities and programs.

Finally, the updated OMB standards also require changes to how data on race and ethnicity are presented or reported. Specifically, the guidance requires that tabulations “must result in the production of as much information on race and/or ethnicity as possible, including data on people reporting multiple categories,” unless doing so violates confidentiality or privacy laws. The two preferred approaches for presenting information like this encourage a deeper disaggregation of data across race and ethnic categories than required under the 1997 guidance and limit the use of a “Multiracial and/or Multiethnic” category as much as possible. Hopefully, this more detailed reporting will result in more information on populations that were previously rendered “invisible” because of how data were previously collected or reported on—including, for example, American Indian or Alaskan Native populations, Arab Americans and people with ancestry in the Middle East or North Africa, and certain Asian subpopulations. At the same time, because the updated standards will limit the comparability of certain data over time, some data users—particularly those reporting on trends—may need to report data using both the 1997 and 2024 formats.

The updated OMB standards on collecting data on race and ethnicity are designed to more accurately reflect how individuals think about their own race and ethnicity. Although the new measures have some limitations, we are hopeful that they will strengthen our work at the Center and the work of other researchers and organizations who work with the diverse Latino community.

Footnotes

^a This term includes individuals of any race who trace their ancestry to Spanish-speaking regions of North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

^b Research finds that the 1997 standards led to a substantial undercount and underreporting of the AIAN population, including in K-12 public schools. The updated standards reflect federal efforts to more accurately count AIAN populations and are “not intended to measure Tribal enrollment” or to “in any way diminish or otherwise affect the political relationship between the sovereign Tribes and the Federal Government.” However, these counts do shape the allocation of resources for government programs, so changes in how data are collected and reported will have practical implications that need to be monitored.

Suggested Citation

Cedeño, D., & Wildsmith, E. (2024). Research implications of OMB’s revised race and ethnicity standards for the Latino population. National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families. DOI: 10.59377/992v2752f

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Steering Committee of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families—along with Kristen Harper, Deana Around Him, Laura Ramirez, and Ana Maria Pavic—for their helpful comments, edits, and research assistance at multiple stages of this project. The Center’s Steering Committee is made up of the Center investigators—Drs. Natasha Cabrera (University of Maryland, Co-PI), Danielle Crosby (University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Co-PI), Lisa Gennetian (Duke University; Co-PI), Lina Guzman (Child Trends, PI), Julie Mendez (University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Co-PI), and Maria Ramos-Olazagasti (Child Trends, Deputy Director and Building Capacity lead)—and federal project officers Drs. Ann Rivera, Jenessa Malin, and Kimberly Clum (Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation).

Editor: Brent Franklin

Designers: Catherine Nichols & Joseph Boven

About the Authors

Diana Cedeño,* PhD, was a senior researcher at Child Trends and part of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families. Dr. Cedeño’s research interests include social exclusion and inclusion among low-income Latinx families, community engagement as a source of resilience, and understanding transnational and translingual families.

Elizabeth Wildsmith,* PhD, is a research scholar at Child Trends and has worked with the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families since 2013. She is a family demographer and sociologist with expertise in reproductive and sexual health, fertility, family and social demography, socioeconomic well-being, and Hispanic families. Her research generally focuses on better understanding the needs of key populations to help inform human service programming.

*Authors contributed equally to this publication.

About the Center

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (Center) is a hub of research to help programs and policy better serve low-income Hispanics across three priority areas: poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency, healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, and early care and education. The Center is led by Child Trends, in partnership with Duke University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and University of Maryland, College Park. This publication was supported by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the United States (U.S.) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award (Award #: 90PH0032) totaling $7.84 million with 99 percentage funded by ACF/HHS and 1 percentage funded by non-government sources. The contents are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACF/HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit the ACF website, Administrative and National Policy Requirements.

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