Changes to Racial Categories in 2002

In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced new standards for federal data on race and ethnicity. The most important of these changes allowed respondents to choose more than one race category when asked about their race. As a result, it is impossible to construct fully consistent time series. Unless the documentation for an indicator specifies something different, in the Stanford Center for the Study of Inequality’s database race groups are defined as follows. Prior to 2002, the labels “White” and “Black” refer to people who chose the categories “White” and “Black,” respectively. Starting in 2002, the labels “White,” “Black” and “Asian” refer to people who only chose “White” “Black,” or “Asian” (in other words, they did not select a second race). Before 2002 data for Asians are not included in the database.

In addition to race, the OMB standards classify people by ethnicity: Hispanic origin, and Not of Hispanic origin. In the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality’s database, the labels “White,” “Black,” and “Asian” include people of any ethnicity unless noted otherwise.

For more information on the racial and ethnic classifications used by the U.S. Census Bureau, see here.