Who Still Claims 'American' as Their Ancestry?

Every year the Census Bureau asks a deceptively simple question: what is your ancestry? Most people write in a country, Ireland, Mexico, Germany, Nigeria. A shrinking group writes in something else entirely: "American." A new analysis of the data finds that the number of people who answer that way is falling, and that where they live says a lot about who still reaches for the word.

According to a U.S. News analysis of American Community Survey data published July 2, 2026, the share of U.S. residents who list their ancestry as American fell from 10.6 percent in 2011 to 8.4 percent in 2024. Over the same period the foreign-born share of the population rose from 13 percent to 14.8 percent, passing the record highs set more than a century ago.

An Appalachian answer

The people who write in "American" are not spread evenly. They cluster in Appalachia and the Ozarks, where the report found 17.7 percent choose it, the most of any region, in places where only 4.8 percent of residents are foreign-born. The single highest share of any county belongs to Buchanan County, Virginia, deep in the state's coalfields, where the analysis found 79.4 percent identify as American.

CensusEasy's own ancestry rankings tell the same geographic story, drawn from a different ACS tabulation, so the exact percentages differ while the order does not. On that data, Buchanan County leads every county in the nation at 59.7 percent, followed by two of its neighbors, Dickenson County at 49.9 percent and Russell County at 47.0 percent. The full highest American ancestry share by county list runs down through the coalfields and into the rural South, with counties in Mississippi, Texas, and Kentucky close behind.

A Southern belt

At the state level the pattern is a broad Southern band. Alabama has the highest share of residents claiming American ancestry at 12.9 percent, followed by Kentucky at 11.5 percent, Tennessee at 11.3 percent, Mississippi at 10.0 percent, and West Virginia at 9.5 percent, according to the state ancestry rankings. These are among the least immigrant regions of the country, where family lines often trace back many generations and the specific European origin has faded from memory or from relevance.

Raw numbers tell a slightly different story than shares. Because big states hold more people, the largest counts of self-identified American ancestry sit in Florida (about 1.7 million), Texas (1.4 million), and California (1.1 million), even though their overall shares are far lower than Alabama's. Nationwide, roughly 17.8 million people write in American as their ancestry.

Why the word is fading

The decline lines up with a more immigrant country. As the foreign-born share climbs toward 15 percent, a larger portion of the population has a specific and recent origin to name, which pulls the "American" share down by simple arithmetic. But the U.S. News analysis notes that demographic change alone may not account for all of it, and that shifting ideas about American identity itself could be part of the story.

What the census cannot say is why any one person chooses the word. For some it signals deep roots and a family that has been here so long the old country no longer means anything. For others it is a statement of identity. The data only shows the pattern: the people most likely to call their ancestry simply American live in the oldest-settled, least foreign-born corners of the country, and their share of the whole is slowly shrinking.

You can see where American ancestry is most and least common on the county and state rankings, or compare the ancestry makeup of any two places with the compare tool.

Sources

Reporting: U.S. News, "What the Census Reveals About Who Still Feels 'American'" (July 2, 2026). Primary data: the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey and its ancestry program. The share and count figures by county and state are from the CensusEasy ancestry rankings, built on the same ACS data.