Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 4, Number 8, 1 ʻAukake 1987 — Facts and Figures [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Facts and Figures

Editor's Note: This eolumn will appear periodicallp in Ka Wai Ola O OHA. Gordon Frazier is a private> statistical consultant whose idea it was to write a brief, easy to read statistical feature about Hawaiians and the issues that affect them. Frazier is another volunteer in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs program who is eontributing his first eolumn.

By Gordon Frazier There is always a controversy whenever you try to count people. How many Hawaiians? How many Chinese? How many tall people? How many rich people? This controversy is especially evident when you try to determine how many Hawaiians there are. For example, the Bureau of the Census, whieh is the official counter for the nation, said there were 118,251 Hawaiians in Hawaii in 1980. In contrast, the Hawaii Department of Health Surveillance Program said that in 1985 there were 174,818 Hawaiians; however, they also said

that īn 1983 there were 198,805 Hawaiians in the state. The techniques differ widely primarily because of the techniques used for counting the population. For example, the Census only allows a person to mark one ethnicity. That means if you are a Hawaiian-Chinese you have to mark either Hawaiian or Chinese. On the other hand, when the Department of Health counts the population, they allow for three different ethnic groups and if one of them is Hawaiian, they will count you as "part-Hawaiian." DOH, therefore, gets a more accurate count of the number of people with Hawaiian ancestry. It is important to remember that no one's figures are exact.

With DOH's assistance in 1984, OHA counted the Hawaiians in the state. Results of OHA's census were published in the OHA Population Survey/Needs Assessment Report in 1986. OHA estimates there are 208,000 people of Hawaiian ancestry in the state. Of these, there are 8,200 pure Hawaiians and another 73,000 who have 50 percent or more Hawaiian biood. As the graph shows, most Hawaiians live on Oahu. The Leeward area seems to be the most popular plaee to live. There are 88,000 Hawaiians on that side of Oahu, while 38,000 live in the Windward area and 43,000 in Honolulu. The Hawaiian populahon ean be described as "a young population." One-half of the Hawaiians are under age 20. The second graph shows estimated numbers of Hawaiians in various age groups.