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Ethnic Group

Child ethnicity is collapsed into six groups based on 31 codes from the CWS/CMS variables p_ethnctyc and hisp_cd. Ethnic groups and codes are listed below:

  1. Black
    • Black (823)
    • Ethiopian (826)
  2. White
    • White (839)
    • White-Armenian (840)
    • White-Central American (841)
    • White-European (842)
    • White-Middle Eastern (843)
    • White-Romanian (844)
  3. Latino
    • Those children coded as Hispanic using the Hispanic Origin indicator (hisp_cd = 'Y'), regardless of primary ethnicity (p_ethnctyc) selection
    • Hispanic (830)
    • Mexican (3164)
    • South American (3165)
    • Caribbean (3162)
    • Central American (3163)
  4. Asian/PI
    • Asian Indian (822)
    • Cambodian (824)
    • Chinese (825)
    • Filipino (827)
    • Guamanian (828)
    • Hawaiian (829)
    • Japanese (831)
    • Korean (832)
    • Laotian (833)
    • Other Asian/Pacific Islander (834)*
    • Other Asian (5922)
    • Other Pacific Islander (5923)
    • Hmong (835)
    • Polynesian (836)
    • Samoan (837)
    • Vietnamese (838)
  5. Native American
    • Alaskan Native (820)
    • American Indian (821)
*Code is inactive.

Note: In late 2017, CDSS provided instruction to counties to ask clients which of the federally recognized races (those marked with an asterisk in CWS/CMS) they identify with. Once a federally recognized race is selected, a secondary “Hispanic” ethnicity can be selected in Other Ethnicity. If the client does not identify with any federally recognized race, then workers were asked to select “Declines to State” as the primary race. However, the Hispanic Origin indicator should always be marked as “Yes” for children with Latino backgrounds in order to avoid accidental categorization into Missing.

When ethnicity is not selected as a dimension on the website, the default filter includes Missing values and all ethnicities. Users can also filter *DYNAMIC* reports to include only children of specific ethnic groups (e.g., only Native American and White children) by checking those ethnicities for which report data are to be included.

Census-based Ethnicity' option (available on some reports) labels will read 'Hispanic' rather than 'Latino' for consistency with Census Bureau usage.

Ethnic groups for population data and rates reports are based on the California Department of Finance annual population projections.
  1. Black
  2. White
  3. Latino
  4. Asian/PI
  5. Native American
  6. Multi-Race
In the rates reports and disparity indices, the denominators–child population based on California Department of Finance data–may include children/youth in the multi-race category. However, the numerators–children with allegations, children with investigations, etc., based on CWS/CMS–always have null values for multi-race, since we do not construct a multi-race category from CWS/CMS data. Conversely, ethnicity may be missing in CWS/CMS and, in those cases, rates numerators are categorized as missing. Department of Finance population data does not include a missing category and, therefore, that row is always null for the denominators of the rates reports. Given these differences between the data sources and the resulting null values, no rates are calculated for the multi-race or missing rows.

See Population methodology for important details.

Note: For Transition Age Youth (TAY) reports, the category Missing is suppressed, therefore the total for this dimension will differ from the total for other dimensions in the same report.