Number of Scottish Americans
The number of Americans of Scottish descent today is estimated to be 20 to 25 million (up to 8.3% of the total US population), and Scotch-Irish, 27 to 30 million (up to 10% of the total US population), the subgroups overlapping and not always distinguishable because of their shared ancestral surnames.
In the 2000 census, 4.8 million Americans self-reported Scottish ancestry, 1.7% of the total US population. Another 4.3 million self-reported Scotch-Irish ancestry, for a total of 9.2 million Americans self-reporting some kind of Scottish descent. According to American Community Survey in 2008 data, Americans self-reporting Scottish ancestry made up an estimated 1.9% of the total U.S. population. Self-reported Scottish and Scotch-Irish ancestry represented 3.1% of the U.S. population in 2008.
Self-reported numbers are regarded by demographers as massive under-counts, because Scottish ancestry is known to be disproportionately under-reported among the majority of mixed ancestry, and because areas where people reported "American" ancestry were the places where, historically, Scottish and Scotch-Irish Protestants settled in America (that is: along the North American coast and the Southeastern United States). Scottish Americans descended from nineteenth-century Scottish immigrants tend to be concentrated in the West, while others in New England are the descendants of immigrants from the Maritime Provinces of Canada, especially in the 1920s.
Americans of Scottish descent outnumber the population of Scotland, where 4,459,071 or 88.09% of people identified as ethnic Scottish in the 2001 Census.
| 1790 U.S Ancestry |
2000 U.S Ancestry |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ancestry group | Number |
% of total |
Ancestry | Number |
% of total |
| English | 1,900,000 | 47.5 | German | 42,885,162 | 15.2 |
| African | 750,000 | 19.0 | African | 36,419,434 | 12.9 |
| Scotch-Irish | 320,000 | 8.0 | Irish | 30,594,130 | 10.9 |
| German | 280,000 | 7.0 | English | 24,515,138 | 8.7 |
| Irish | 200,000 | 5.0 | Mexican | 20,640,711 | 7.3 |
| Scottish | 160,000 | 4.0 | Italian | 15,723,555 | 5.6 |
| Welsh | 120,000 | 3.0 | French | 10,846,018 | 3.9 |
| Dutch | 100,000 | 2.5 | Hispanic | 10,017,244 | 3.6 |
| French | 80,000 | 2.0 | Polish | 8,977,444 | 3.2 |
| Native American | 50,000 | 1.0 | Scottish | 4,890,581 | 1.7 |
| Spanish | 20,000 | 0.5 | Dutch | 4,542,494 | 1.6 |
| Swedish | 20,000 | 0.5 | Norwegian | 4,477,725 | 1.6 |
| Total | 3,929,326 | 100 | Scotch-Irish | 4,319,232 | 1.5 |
| British (Total) | 2,500,000 | 62.5 | British (Total) |
36,564,465 | 12.9 |
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