An estimated 1.5 million Hispanics of Dominican origin resided in the United States in 2010, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Dominicans in this statistical profile are people who self-identified as Hispanics of Dominican origin; this means either they themselves are Dominican immigrants or they trace their family ancestry to the Dominican Republic. Dominicans are the fifth-largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States, accounting for 3.0% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2010. Mexicans, the nation’s largest Hispanic origin group, constituted 32.9 million, or 64.9%, of the Hispanic population in 2010.1
This statistical profile compares the demographic, income and economic characteristics of the Dominican population with the characteristics of all Hispanics and the U.S. population overall. It is based on tabulations from the 2010 American Community Survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.2 Key facts include:
- Immigration status. Nearly six-in-ten Dominicans (57%) in the United States are foreign born compared with 37% of Hispanics and 13% of the U.S. population overall. Most immigrants from the Dominican Republic (63%) arrived in the U.S. in 1990 or later. Less than half of Dominican immigrants (47%) are U.S. citizens.
- Language. A majority (55%) of Dominicans speak English proficiently.3 The other 45% of Dominicans ages 5 and older report speaking English less than very well, compared with 35% of all Hispanics.
- Age. Dominicans are younger than U.S. population and older than Hispanics overall. The median age of Dominicans is 29; the median ages of the U.S. population and all Hispanics are 37 and 27, respectively.
- Marital status. Dominicans are less likely than Hispanics overall to be married—36% versus 44%.
- Fertility. More than half (54%) of Dominican women ages 15 to 44 who gave birth in the 12 months prior to the survey were unmarried. That was higher than the rate for all Hispanic women—42%—and the overall rate for U.S. women—36%.
- Regional dispersion. Eight-in-ten Dominicans (79%) live in the Northeast, and nearly half (48%) live in New York.
- Educational attainment. Dominicans have higher levels of education than the Hispanic population overall. Some 15% of Dominicans ages 25 and older—compared with 13% of all U.S. Hispanics—have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree.
- Income. The median annual personal earnings for Dominicans ages 16 and older were $20,000 in 2010, the same as the earnings of all Hispanics; the median earnings for the U.S. population were $28,500.
- Poverty status. The share of Dominicans who live in poverty, 26%, is higher than the rate for the general U.S. population (15%) and similar to the rate for Hispanics overall (25%).
- Health Insurance. More than one-fifth of Dominicans (22%) do not have health insurance compared with 31% of all Hispanics and 16% of the general U.S. population. Additionally, 9% of Dominicans younger than 18 are uninsured.
- Homeownership. The rate of Dominican homeownership (24%) is lower than the rate for all Hispanics (47%) and the U.S. population (65%) as a whole.
About the Data
This statistical profile of Hispanics of Dominican origin is based on the Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is the largest household survey in the United States, with a sample of about 3 million addresses. The data used for this statistical profile come from 2010 ACS Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), representing a 1% sample of the U.S. population.
Like any survey, estimates from the ACS are subject to sampling error and (potentially) measurement error. Information on the ACS sampling strategy and associated error is available at http://www.census.gov/acs/www/methodology/methodology_main/. An example of measurement error is that citizenship rates for the foreign born are estimated to be overstated in the Decennial Census and other official surveys, such as the ACS (see Jeffrey Passel. “Growing Share of Immigrants Choosing Naturalization,” Pew Hispanic Center, Washington, D.C. (March 28, 2007)). Finally, estimates from the ACS may differ from the Decennial Census or other Census Bureau surveys due to differences in methodology and data collection procedures (see, for example, http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/methodology/ASA_nelson.pdf, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/laborfor/laborfactsheet092209.html and http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/datasources/factsheet.html).
