Why the first potential changes to minimum standards for race and ethnicity data used in federal reporting in 25 years matter.

Analysis Finds Share of Hispanic Population Reported as Multiracial Jumped from 4% to 44% from 2010-2021   A KFF analysis finds that the percentage of Hispanic people identified as some other race grew from 28% to 35% from 2010 to 2021 and that the share of the Hispanic population reporting as multiracial jumped from 4% to 44% based on the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, largely reflecting shifts in how the U.S. Census Bureau asked about and coded race and ethnicity information over the period. The KFF look at U.S. Census data reporting by race and ethnicity comes as the Biden Administration issued proposals for the first potential changes to minimum standards for race and ethnicity data used in federal reporting in 25 years. The analysis finds that the share of the U.S. population identifying as some other race grew from 5% to 7% and the share reporting two or more races increased from 3% to 13% from 2010 to 2021. As discussed in Proposed Changes to Federal Standards for Collecting and Reporting Race/Ethnicity Data: What Are They and Why do they Matter?, these trends highlight the importance of approaches to collecting and reporting data on race and ethnicity for understanding the diversity of the population and identifying health and health care disparities. Among other changes, the proposals would provide a new separate racial category for people who identify as Middle Eastern or North African and shift to collect race and ethnicity through a combined single question instead of asking about Hispanic or Latino ethnicity in a separate question from race. While a final decision on changes isn't expected until 2024, the proposal is open for public comment until April. Any changes to the collection of data on race and ethnicity would impact understanding of disparities in health and health care and could influence policy efforts.   Read the Policy Watch CONTACT:   Rakesh Singh | (650) 854-9400 | rsingh@kff.org Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues, KFF is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. kff.org  |  khn.org Did someone forward this to you? Click here to sign up for emails from KFF. This email was sent to awesomeblogger71.lificletter@blogger.com. Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. Or, permanently unsubscribe from all future emails.  If you need help or have questions, please send an email to subscriptions@kff.org. Please do not reply to this email as this address is not monitored. KFF 185 Berry Street Suite 2000 San Francisco, CA 94107