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A record 70.1 million people in the U.S. now identify as Hispanic, yet only about a quarter of them say a pan-ethnic word is what they use most — most reach for their family's home country instead.
- When forced to pick one umbrella term, "Hispanic" beats "Latino" nationally by nearly two to one, but South Americans are the one origin group that flips the other way.
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Hispanic self-identification isn't fixed: it's nearly universal among immigrants and drops to a coin flip by the fourth U.S.-born generation.
A record share of the U.S. population now falls under the "Hispanic" umbrella — and most of them don't reach for that word to describe themselves. New research released by the Pew Research Center on Sept. 15, the opening day of Hispanic Heritage Month, found that a majority default to a country name — Mexican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican — over any collective label at all.
The timing lands awkwardly for pollsters, advertisers and political campaigns that routinely speak of "the Hispanic vote" or "Latino buying power" as though 70-plus million people share one identity. The data suggests something closer to the opposite.
A Record Population, a Rejected Label
The nation's Hispanic population hit an all-time high of 70.1 million as of mid-2025, according to Census Bureau population estimates that Pew analyzed for its report. That's up from roughly 50.5 million just fifteen years earlier.
Despite that growth, a companion Pew survey of nearly 5,000 Hispanic adults, fielded in October 2025, found that 53% describe themselves most often by their family's country of origin — either alone or paired with "American," as in "Mexican American." Only 27% default to a pan-ethnic term such as Hispanic or Latino, and another 18% call themselves simply American.
Country First, Pan-Ethnic Second
That preference for a homeland label runs deepest among people closest to the immigrant experience. Roughly two-thirds of foreign-born Hispanics lead with a country-of-origin label, a share that drops steadily across generations — down to about a third among Hispanics whose parents were also born in the U.S.
Puerto Ricans stand out as the group most anchored to origin branding: seven-in-ten U.S. adults of Puerto Rican descent say they most often call themselves Puerto Rican, alone or combined with American, according to the same Pew survey.
"Hispanic" Still Wins — Except in One Region
When Pew asked which single umbrella term people prefer for the group overall, "Hispanic" beat "Latino" nationally, 54% to 30% — a preference that has held since the center began tracking the question in the early 2000s. "Latinx" and "Latine" barely register, drawing 1% support apiece.
South Americans are the exception: 53% of that origin group prefer "Latino," versus just 31% who choose "Hispanic" — a reversal researchers tie to how the two terms took hold in different regions decades ago. Younger adults and immigrants lean only slightly less toward "Hispanic" than the rest of the population, not dramatically so.
Why Identity Fades After a Few Generations
The starkest number in Pew's release concerns generational drift. Among people with Hispanic ancestry, near-universal identification (97%) among immigrants holds fairly steady through the second generation (92%), then slides to 77% among grandchildren of immigrants and bottoms out at just 50% — a coin flip — among Americans whose grandparents were all born in the 50 states. That specific figure comes from a Pew study first published in 2017 and reused as background in the new report, not a fresh 2025 measurement.
Pew links the longer-term drift to rising rates of intermarriage — roughly a third of Hispanic newlyweds now marry someone who isn't Hispanic — rather than any recent falloff in arrivals from Latin America. In fact, the same research package notes that legal and illegal immigration from the region actually accelerated between 2021 and 2024, averaging more than a million arrivals a year.
A More Multiracial Community Than the Census Once Showed
The report also flags a shift buried in the racial data: 29.4 million Hispanics were recorded as multiracial in 2024 — a bigger group than any single-race category — up sharply from just 3 million at the 2010 count. Pew attributes most of that jump to changes in how the Census Bureau codes write-in answers, not a sudden shift in how people see their own ancestry.
Writing about the same underlying survey, Axios found that Hispanic Trump voters are nearly twice as likely as Harris voters to describe themselves simply as "American" rather than by any Hispanic or Latino label — evidence that the identity split runs along political lines too, at least when it comes to how people vote. Pew's broader research makes a related point: as the center's own analysts put it, there's no simple answer to who counts as Hispanic in the first place.
Why the Word Choice Matters
For a population this large and this varied, the label debate is far from academic. It shapes how campaigns target voters, how brands pitch products during Hispanic Heritage Month and beyond, and how the next generation talks about itself at the dinner table.
