Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant Connections Fall Away

While there are 42.7 million adults in the United States with Hispanic ancestry, 11 percent do not identify as Hispanic. This number is expected to increase due to a long-standing high intermarriage rate and a decade of decreasing immigration from Latin America. In the report Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant Connections Fall, the authors examine the experiences and self-identity of U.S. adults with Hispanic heritage. Their results are based on findings from two Pew Research Center national surveys of two mutually exclusive groups: 1,500 self-identified Hispanic adults, and 401 adults who have Hispanic, Latino or Spanish ancestry but who do not identify as Hispanic. Their findings suggest that later generations (particularly the third and fourth) have different experiences than earlier generations: they are less exposed to Hispanic cultural celebrations, less encouraged to speak Spanish, face less discrimination, have fewer Hispanic peers and are less likely to live in a Hispanic neighborhood. Those who do not identify as Hispanic are more likely to identify as white, and 27 percent said "their Hispanic ancestry is too far back or their background is mixed." If self-identity as Hispanic decreases over time, then current growth projections for the self-identified Hispanic population may have to be altered and "the nation's own sense of its diversity could change." (Sakura Tomizawa for The Immigrant Learning Center's Public Education Institute)

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