The information on place of birth is used to classify the population into two major groups: Native and foreign born.

The foreign-born population is combined with the native population of foreign or mixed parentage in a single category termed the "foreign stock." This category comprises all first and second generation Americans. Third and subsequent generations are described as "native of native parentage." Age data for the total foreign stock are presented in this report in table 14; all other data for the foreign stock are classified by nativity.

In this report, persons of foreign stock are classified according to their country of origin, with separate distributions shown for the country of birth of the foreign born and the parents' country of birth for the native of foreign or mixed parentage. Native persons of foreign parentage whose parents were born in different countries are classified according to the country of birth of the father.

The question on place of birth and parents' birthplace specified that country of birth be reported according to international boundaries as recognized by the United States at the time of the census. (See excerpt from questionnaire above.) Because of the many changes in boundaries that have occurred over the past hundred years in the areas from which the major segment of the foreign stock _have emigrated, it is reasonable to expect that these instructions may not have been followed in all instances. Some misreporting of place of birth by persons ignorant of boundary changes, as well as by persons of illegal immigration status, most likely exists. Although no specific evidence can be cited for 1960, on the basis of data from the Post Enumeration Survey for 1950, it was estimated that the same country of- birth was obtained in the census and the survey for approximately 90 percent of the foreign-born persons properly included in the 1950 Census.

Table B. Median Age of the Foreign Born, for the United States, 1960, and of the Foreign-Born White, for Conterminous Untied States, 1950 and 1940, By Selected Country of Origin

Country of birth	Total foreign born, 1960		Foreign-born white
	Median age	Percent white	1950	19401
Total	257.2	95.4	56.1	50.9
United Kingdom	56.8	99.7	356.9	53.9
Ireland	59.3	99.9	58.3	54.7
Norway	64.8	100	61.8	56.3
Sweden	67.5	99.9	63.6	58.0
Germany	52.8	99.7	57. 3	56.6
Austria	63.5	99.9	58.4	51.1
Poland	62.2	99.9	57.5	49.9
Czechoslovakia	62.6	99.9	58.5	52.2
Hungary	60.4	99.9	(4)	50.9
Yugoslavia	58.7	99.9	(4)	50.0
Lithuania	65.6	99.9	(4)	51.8
Finland	66.5	99.9	(4)	53.2
U.S.S.R	62.9	99.8	557.5	49.4
Italy	60.8	99.956.5	48.8
Canada	50.4	98.9	49.6	69.5
Mexico	42.8	99.4	44.0	40.3

In this century, nativity and parentage data have been available for the total population from the 1900 and 1960 Censuses only; for intervening censuses, tabulations were made for only the white population. In order to permit historical comparisons, a number of tables in this report are shown for both the total and the white population.

Historically most of the immigrants to the United States were from European countries, and, therefore, only a small proportion of the immigrants were non-white. With the decline in immigration this situation has been changing, as is reflected in the increasing proportion of nonwhites in the foreign-born population (table C).

Table C. Foreign-Born Population, Total and Nonwhite, For Conterminous United States: 1900 To 1960

Census year	Total	Nonwhite
		Number	Percent
1960	9,661,028	381,709	4.0
1950	10,347,395	251,980	2.4
1940	11,594,896	175,758	1.5
1930	14,204,149	220,744	1.6
1920	13,920,692	207,938	1.5
1910	13,515,886	170,341	1.3
1900	10,341,276	127,459	1.2

Besides the inclusion of the foreign nonwhite stock, there are other inconsistencies between 1960 and earlier censuses. The general method of processing the returns for country of origin was the same for the 1950 and 1960 Censuses; however, a slight variation was introduced in the handling of entries of Austria-Hungary. In 1950, the technique of assigning a specific country for entries of Austria-Hungary depended on the surname. In 1960, a question on mother tongue was asked of all foreign-born persons and the allocation to a specific country was made on the basis of the language reported. For example, persons reporting Rumanian were classified as born in Rumania. For blanks on mother tongue, a system was devised to allocate the entries of Austria-Hungary in the coding operation on the basis of the distribution of nationalities of migrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire as reported in the 1920 Census report, Volume II, Population. It appears that, as a result of these revisions in the coding procedures, the apparent understatement in the number of persons of Yugoslavian origin, which was evident in the data for 1950, does not exist in the published 1960 statistics. The change in the method of processing entries of Austria-Hungary combined with the improvements resulting from self- enumeration may have been responsible for the better coverage. (For additional information on these data see the text in Volume I, Characteristics of the Population, Part 1, United States Summary.)

The distinction between Canada-French and Canada- Other was not maintained in the collection and publication of 1960 data on country of origin. Data for 1960 for persons of Canadian origin are comparable with the sum of the categories Canada-Other and Canada-French from earlier censuses.

Prior to 1950, questions on citizenship and mother tongue were used, when feasible, to assign entries on nativity and country of origin where these entries were omitted or uncodable. In the 1950 Census the question on mother tongue was excluded; in 1960, this question was asked of the foreign born, but citizenship was not asked. Data for 1960 on mother tongue are to be presented in the forthcoming report PC(2)-1E, Mother Tongue.

The classification by country of origin appears to be consistent with the expected values based on an examination of past censuses. In countries where the same boundaries have been maintained over a long period of time, the classification by country of origin appears to be reasonable.

The data seem to indicate that a completely accurate count of the foreign stock from areas in which there had been considerable boundary changes after World War I may not have been achieved. An example of such a problem is found in the reporting of Austria- Hungary as place of birth. A discussion of the technique designed to handle such entries is given above in the section on "Comparability of the data."

Changes from 1940 to 1950 and from 1950 to 1960 in the foreign stock from Ireland (Eire), Northern Ireland, and, consequently, the United Kingdom seem to reflect errors in reporting rather than actual changes in the numbers in each category. Because of the omission from the schedule of any instruction to distinguish Northern Ireland and Ireland (Eire) in 1950, the number of persons of foreign stock from Northern Ireland was apparently underreported to a considerable degree in that census and that from Ireland, correspondingly overreported. The reinstated special caution relating to this point on the 1960 questionnaire resulted in a very different and probably more correct distribution between the two countries. The foreign born from Northern Ireland increased by 340 percent and those from Ireland decreased by 33 percent between 1950 and 1960. Similar changes occurred for native persons of Irish parentage. The decline in the foreign stock from the United Kingdom between 1950 and 1960 undoubtedly would have been greater had it not been affected by the spurious increase in the figure for Northern Ireland.