German Still Most Frequently Reported Ancestry

Nearly 43 million people — about 1-in-6 U.S. residents — identified their ancestry as German in Census 2000, the Census Bureau reported today. Other large ancestry groups were Irish (30.5 million), African-American (24.9 million), English (24.5 million) and Mexican
(18.4 million).
The report released today is based on Census 2000. More recent information on ancestry for selected geographies is available from the 2002 American Community Survey (ACS) tabulations at <http://www.census.gov/acs/www/>.

The report, Ancestry: 2000, [PDF] includes ancestry data for groups with 100,000 or more people at the national level, as well as changes since 1990. In addition to national-level results, the report lists the five largest ancestries at the regional and state levels and the single largest ancestry in the 10 largest U.S. cities. A thematic map provides a representation of the largest ancestry groups across all counties.

The data contained in the report are based on responses from a sample of households who received the census long form. Nationally, about 1-in-6 households were included in the sample in Census 2000. The data are subject to sampling and nonsampling errors.