If you go by the number of people who check the “Hispanic” box in US Census Bureau forms, people of Latin American descent make up 18% of the population. But, among the adult population, there are another 5 million, who don’t consider themselves Hispanic but descend from Latin America, according estimates from Pew Research Center.
Among the estimated 42.7 million U.S. adults with Hispanic ancestry in 2015, 89%, or about 37.8 million, thought of themselves as Hispanic or Latino, but the rest did