This paper describes the transformations in federal classification of ethno-racial information since the civil rights era of the 1960s. These changes were introduced in the censuses of 1980 and 2000, and we anticipate another major change in the 2020 Census. The most important changes in 1980...

On the United States' census form, American citizens are told they may list any ethnic ancestries with which they identify, but are instructed to mark one only in the question on race. Joel Perlmann asserts that it is in the public interest to allow people to declare themselves as having origins...

New data from the IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) project permit an exploration of the demographic basis for ethnic survival across successive generations. I first explore the degree of ethnic blending among the grandchildren of early- to mid-19thcentury German immigrants; second,...

This paper discusses support for, and opposition to, racial classification of European immigrants among high-level researchers at both the United States Immigration Commission of 1907 - 11 (the Dillingham Commission) and the Census Bureau during those same years. A critical distinction must be...

This working paper takes up three related themes. In section 1, I briefly describe the issues relevant to surveying American Jews and highlight the importance of authoritative national surveys; in section 2, I note that these surveys have not included much exploration of American Jewish...

While there have been very few national surveys of American Jews, two that we do have are from the same period, 200001. They were conducted by different researchers using different sampling methods. Known as the NJPS and the AJIS, these surveys are now available as public-use datasets, but they...

The old ways in which surveys of Jews handled marginal cases no longer make sense, and the number of cases involved is no longer small. I examine in detail the public-use samples of the two recent national surveys of Americans of recent Jewish originthe National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS)...

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) surveys of Jewish opinion are unique both in being conducted annually and in the subject matter covered. This paper assesses the quality of these samples. I first summarize my earlier findings on the implications of limiting a sample to respondents who...