Report: Many Brazilians consider themselves Hispanic

The new data highlights a discrepancy between Brazilian peoples' self-identity and the government definition of 'Hispanic' and 'Latino.'

by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech | Apr. 19, 2023

FILE – An envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident sits on a desk on on April 5, 2020, in Detroit. A coding error in an annual survey by the U.S. Census Bureau has offered unprecedented insight into how large numbers of Brazilians in the U.S. identify as Hispanic. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

Story at a glance

A new analysis from the Pew Research Center shows that many Brazilians consider themselves Hispanic or Latino.

A coding error during the 2020 American Community Survey resulted in many more people being marked as Latino and Hispanic than years prior.

The error highlights how Latino and Hispanic identity is complex.

A coding error in the 2020 U.S. Census revealed that more Brazilians consider themselves to be Latino than previously thought, according to a new Pew Research Center report.

This discrepancy highlights long-standing issues with how the U.S. Latino population is measured by the census.

Only about 14,000 Brazilians in the U.S. marked themselves as Hispanic or Latino in 2019 American Community Survey, an annual demographic survey conducted by the Census Bureau.

And in 2021, roughly 16,000 Brazilians considered themselves to be Latino or Hispanic in that same survey.

But in 2020 that number soared with at least 416,000 Brazilians marking themselves as Hispanic or Latino on that year’s American Community Survey, the report shows.

Brazilians are not considered Hispanic or Latino under the federal government’s definition of the term which was last updated in 1997.

Only people of “Spanish culture or origin” like Americans with Mexican, Puerto Rican or Cuban heritage regardless of race are considered Hispanic or Latino.

“When someone indicates that they are Hispanic or Latino, so they mark that box, and write that their origin is Brazilian there are coding rules from the Census Bureau that will take that person’s Brazilian answer and also the Latino answer and change it so that they are not marked as Latino but indicated as Brazilian someplace else,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at The Pew Research Center.

This recategorization is also done for people with origins in Belize, the Philippines, and Portugal, according to Pew.

The Census Bureau accidentally left Brazilian and some other group out of its “back coding” produces during the editing process of the 2020 American Community Survey resulting in a massive spike in the number of people counted as Hispanic or Latino.

“In particular, the large number of Brazilians who self-identified as Hispanic or Latino highlights how their view of their own identity does not necessarily align with official government definitions,” the report states. “All this makes measuring Hispanic or Latino identity in surveys a complex and delicate undertaking.”

There were 526,099 Brazilian people in the United States in 2021, according to the American Community Survey