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.

For Immediate Release: Thursday, December 15, 2016

Fearing the film would be unpopular, movie studio executives chose these cities to debut the movie to better gauge audience reaction. On August 11–12, 1939, the movie The Wizard of Oz premiered in Dennis, MA, Kenosha, WI, and Oconomowoc, WI. In 2021, spending at movie theaters and streaming content at home and on mobile devices reached $36.8 billion. When the movie The Wizard of Oz premiered in August 1939, 85 million Americans watched movies in theaters and spent $659 million every week. Education is one of many topics covered by the survey and the data are not designed to provide a highly detailed look at the many different types of educational arrangements and innovations pursued by households in this unusual school year. Among the 15 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), for example, the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH MSA, went from 0.9% in the spring of 2020 to 8.9% by the fall.

European Groups Comprised the Largest Detailed White Groups

In short, the country had not yet been impacted by most of the major postwar demographic and economic trends that would greatly change the size, shape and composition of the U.S. population. In hindsight, we can now see that on many demographic fronts the U.S. population in 1950 looked more like the country in 1940 than the rapidly growing, youthful nation to come in 1960 or 1970. With little housing construction during the prior two decades, the nation’s population mostly lived in cities and rural areas, often in crowded conditions. Italian was also the largest group in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, New Haven County, Connecticut and Guaynabo Municipio, Puerto Rico.
From 1790 through 1820, the decennial census was conducted as of the first Monday in August. The 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz was filmed at the Metro Goldwyn-Mayer studios (above) in Culver City, CA, and in Liberal, KS. The Wizard of Oz remains so popular that the 2019 theatrical release of the movie commemorating its 80th anniversary grossed more than $1.2 million! Today, the movie remains a staple of the holiday television schedule with families planning to view the movie together at Thanksgiving and the Winter Holidays.
In addition, we decided to continue using this racial and ethnic cross-tabulation because it is commonly used by the Census Bureau and other data users. These diversity calculations require the use of mutually exclusive racial and ethnic (nonoverlapping) categories. The overall racial and ethnic diversity of the country has increased since 2010, according to U.S. Today’s companion America Counts story on the overview of race and ethnicity explains that differences in overall racial distributions are largely due to design improvements in the two separate questions for race data collection and processing, as well as some demographic changes over the past 10 years.

Some Sunbelt Cities Yet to Show Explosive Growth

As our country’s demographics change and the nation becomes more multiracial, it’s important to understand the composition of the race alone and race alone or in any combination populations. These multiple measures of diversity complement the 2020 Census redistricting data release and enable us to explore the richness and complexity of our nation’s population in a new light. The White alone non-Hispanic population was the most prevalent racial or ethnic group for all states except California (Hispanic or Latino), Hawaii (Asian alone non-Hispanic), New Mexico (Hispanic or Latino), and the District of Columbia, a state equivalent (Black or African American alone non-Hispanic).
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.
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).

How to Access, Download and Visualize Redistricting Data

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.
Home movie audiences had an opportunity to purchase the movie on video tape for the first time in 1980. Frank Baum’s Oz-themed novels have sold since the 1939 premier, and the books and wino casino 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 movie stars Grand Rapids, MN, native Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl who is transported to the Land of Oz by a tornado.
• The Italian alone population was concentrated in New York and New Jersey.
• In addition, we decided to continue using this racial and ethnic cross-tabulation because it is commonly used by the Census Bureau and other data users.
• You can explore the Diversity Index for all states and counties by interacting with the data visualization.
• The Technical Documentation PDF 10.6 MB provides more information on data quality and how the Census Bureau collects, codes and tabulates statistics on race and Hispanic or Latino origin.
• 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.

There was an average of 3.51 people per household in 1950, substantially higher than the average of 2.61 in 2019. The population under age 18 was 31.0% of the total population in 1950 and would grow to 34.3% in 1970. In some of these cities, the population began climbing again in recent decades. In some cases, the population losses were sizeable, amounting to one half or more of the cities’ 1950 populations. The other eight (Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, St Louis, Washington, D.C., and Boston) all saw their decennial populations peak in 1950 and fall in the coming decades. A number of large industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest hit their peak decennial populations in 1950 and would experience population declines in subsequent decades in both relative and absolute terms.

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.
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.
Other White responses, such as Canadian and Pennsylvania German, represented around 2% of the White alone and White alone or in combination populations. Detailed European responses accounted for 58.8% of the White alone and 56.1% of the White alone or in combination populations. About two-thirds of the White alone and White alone or in combination populations reported a detailed response, such as German, Irish, Lebanese or French Canadian.
More than 8 decades later, movie critics, adults, and children still consider The Wizard of Oz to be one of the greatest movies in film history. On August 15, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios hosted a star-studded, “official” premiere replete with searchlights, movie props, and sidewalk bleachers for fans at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, CA. Homeschooling rates are increasing across race groups and ethnicities. 2020 Census Demographic Data Map Viewer is a web map application that includes state-, county-, and census tract-level data from the 2020 Census. More racial or ethnic groups are represented and the patterns are not as tightly clustered in specific regions.

• Among the 15 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), for example, the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH MSA, went from 0.9% in the spring of 2020 to 8.9% by the fall.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.
• The other eight (Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, St Louis, Washington, D.C., and Boston) all saw their decennial populations peak in 1950 and fall in the coming decades.
• An official website of the United States government
• The Wizard of Oz remains so popular that the 2019 theatrical release of the movie commemorating its 80th anniversary grossed more than $1.2 million!

In 1984, his novel The Natural was adapted to a popular movie.Thelma Strabel worked as a census taker before the Saturday Evening Post magazine serialized her 1940 novel Reap the Wild Wind. Our most recent census counted 331,449,281 people as of April 1, 2020. You can learn more about the Wizard of Oz and its cast using census data and records.
During the same period, the largest racial or ethnic group has changed for some states and counties, and local level results illuminate new areas of diversity across the country. Using the same Diversity Index calculation for 2020 and 2010 redistricting data, the chance that two people chosen at random will be from different racial or ethnic groups has increased to 61.1% in 2020 from 54.9% in 2010. In this format, the DI tells us the chance that two people chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups. A value close to 1 indicates that almost everyone in the population has different racial and ethnic characteristics. A value of 0 indicates that everyone in the population has the same racial and ethnic characteristics. We use the Diversity Index (DI) to measure the probability that two people chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups.
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.
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.