The people of the world (and how they're counted)

Every country on earth, no matter how isolated, has some ethnic diversity; the mingling of people from more than one ethnic group. We usually talk about diversity in regards to how the majority of the country treats ethnic minorities. Lots of countries find it useful to keep track of what major groups make up their population.

Here are some statistics about what the different ethnic groups are in countries around the world. You'll notice that the ethnic identities listed for each country can seem very different--Bahrain only lists Bahrainis and non-Bahrainis. The groups they track are determined by each country, so the standards can vary. Here are the results for each country presented alphabetically, taken from censuses and official surveys.

What is an ethnicity? What is a race?

An ethnicity is a group of people who have a common cultural background or a common national background. Ethnicities are groups of people who tend to share common foods, religious practices, holidays, and so on. People from the same ethnic origin can have similar genetics due to how people have evolved and migrated over the last 200,000 years. Scandinavian people, for example, may be more prone to developing Lynch's Syndrome.

A race is something that's much harder to pin down. Racial groups tend to be divided by similar physical characteristics like skin color, head shape, and so on. Unlike ethnicity, which is tied to a particular people or place, race is imprecise. And, to be frank, there isn't any real scientific basis for dividing people into races. As is discussed in this Harvard piece, genetic differences between people of the same "race" (black people or Asian people) can be as wide or wider than genetic differences between people who aren't. But, we still tend to track racial statistics. Despite race not being "real," because race has been important to people over the past centuries it has had real effects.