Multiracial boom in 2020 census was mostly an illusion, researchers say

When the 2020 census results were released, they showed a boom in the number of people classified as multiracial in the United States since 2010. “These improvements reveal that the U.S. population is much more multiracial and diverse than what we measured in the past,” Census Bureau officials said at the time. The Princeton researchers said the Census Bureau mistakenly mixed up ancestry with identity and national origin with race, and they believe the agency should abandon using “origins” to categorize people. Researchers have been asking the Census Bureau since 2021 to rerun the 2020 data using 2010 methods so that an “apples to apples” comparison of demographic changes can be made, but the agency hasn’t done it yet, said historian Margo Anderson, who served on a National Academies panel that reviewed the quality of the census. “There is a lot of frustration there because we can’t know.” The Census Bureau has historically struggled to classify multiracial people, said Susan Graham, an advocate for multiracial representation in official statistics.