On March 29, 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced a new set of guidelines for Statistical Policy Directive 15 (SPD15). These guidelines require that federal statistical agencies use a single combined race and ethnicity question for all data collection initiatives. This marks a notable distinction from previous iterations of SPD15 (1977 and 1997), when federal statistical agencies were required to use two separate questions to collect race and ethnicity data. In this brief, we use government microdata to examine recent shifts in the racial categorization of the U.S. Black population. While these data were not collected under new SPD15 guidelines, they do include a new race question design that is based on the forthcoming combined question. We find that this redesign may have led to divergent shifts in how the Black population was categorized. We offer points for the U.S. Census Bureau to consider prior to their implementation of SPD15 guidelines in the 2030 census.Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysi
