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More than 1-in-2 people who reported in Census 2000 that they were Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander resided in just two states -- Hawaii and California, according to a new analysis released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.

The Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population: 2000 , one in a series of Census 2000 briefs, shows that 874,000 people, or 0.3 percent of the total population, reported they were Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. The number includes 399,000 people, or 0.1 percent, who reported they were Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander alone, in addition to 476,000, or 0.2 percent, who reported this race in combination with one or more other races.

Census 2000 was the first census in which respondents could identify themselves as more than one race. Hawaii and California together were the home states of 58 percent of Pacific Islanders. In this release, the term "Pacific Islander" refers to those persons who identified themselves as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander either alone or in combination with one or more other races. Those two states, plus Washington, Texas, New York, Florida, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Arizona, accounted for 80 percent of the total Pacific Islander population in 2000.

Other highlights of the brief:

Regions

• In Census 2000, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of all people who reported they were Pacific Islander lived in the West, 14 percent in the South, 7 percent in the Northeast and 6 percent in the Midwest.

States

• Hawaii had the largest number of people reporting they were Pacific Islander (283,000), followed by California (221,000).
• Hawaii, with 23 percent, had the highest proportion of people identifying themselves as Pacific Islander.

Counties

• The counties with the highest concentrations of Pacific Islanders were in Hawaii. More than 25 percent of the population in three of Hawaii's five counties were of this race. Between 20 percent and 25 percent of the population in the two remaining counties reported their race as Pacific Islander.

Places

• Honolulu, with 58,000, had the largest number of people reporting as Pacific Islander, followed by New York, Los Angeles and San Diego, each with between 10,000 and 20,000.

Detailed Pacific Islander Groups

• More people reported Native Hawaiian (401,000) than any other Pacific Islander group, followed by Samoan (133,000) and Guamanian and Chamorro (93,000).
• Census 2000 data on race are not directly comparable with data from the 1990 or earlier censuses because of the change that allowed respondents to report more than one race. Also, "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander" was a new race group in 2000; in 1990, Asians, a separate group in 2000, was joined with Pacific Islanders, including Hawaiians, in "Asians and Pacific Islanders."
• A listing of released and forthcoming Census 2000 briefs can be found on the Census Bureau's Web site at www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs.html, including briefs on topics such as race, Hispanic origin, gender and housing.