Most Irish Americans are Protestant

[King of Kensington]

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/irish-americans-are-more-protestant-than-catholic

[Dr. MB]

Not surprising, given that a lot of (most?) Irish Americans live in the South.

[King of Kensington]

Not surprising given that:

- Protestants dominated earlier than Catholics and there's a generation multiplier

- Many converted

- Although Catholics made a majority of Irish immigrants during the Famine and post-Famine years, Irish Protestant immigration didn't actually stop.  Many of Irish Protestant ancestry would have immigrated via Canada as well but wouldn't necessarily have shown up as "Irish immigrants" in the Census.

[cinyc]

Not surprising, given that a lot of (most?) Irish Americans live in the South.

The largest concentration of Irish-Americans live in the northeast. The South doesn't have that high an Irish percent:

https://twitter.com/cinyc9/status/974815657614348288

[cinyc]

For example, compare the Percent Irish Ancestry map of Boston:


To Charlotte:

[Gass3268]

Not surprising, given that a lot of (most?) Irish Americans live in the South.

The largest concentration of Irish-Americans live in the northeast. The South doesn't have that high an Irish percent:

https://twitter.com/cinyc9/status/974815657614348288

Couldn't a lot of this be due to Southerners with Irish ancestry now reporting their ancestry as American?

[cinyc]

Couldn't a lot of this be due to Southerners with Irish ancestry now reporting their ancestry as American?

Could be. Or it could be that a lot of the southerners are have Scotch-Irish ancestry, not pure Irish ancestry, at least to the extent they remember their ancestry.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Irish and Scots-Irish should really be separated here.

[King of Kensington]

There are fewer Irish ancestry Americans reported today than when ancestry was first reported in 1980.  The dropoff has mostly occurred among Protestants of Irish ancestry and it's barely budged in more Catholic regions such as New England.

It would be interesting to see the numbers broken down regionally.

[jimrtex]

Not surprising, given that a lot of (most?) Irish Americans live in the South.

The largest concentration of Irish-Americans live in the northeast. The South doesn't have that high an Irish percent:

The highest concentration does not necessarily indicate the largest amount.

[Dr. MB]

There are fewer Irish ancestry Americans reported today than when ancestry was first reported in 1980.  The dropoff has mostly occurred among Protestants of Irish ancestry and it's barely budged in more Catholic regions such as New England.

It would be interesting to see the numbers broken down regionally.

Going the "American" route I assume.

[cinyc]

Not surprising, given that a lot of (most?) Irish Americans live in the South.

The largest concentration of Irish-Americans live in the northeast. The South doesn't have that high an Irish percent:

The highest concentration does not necessarily indicate the largest amount.

No, it doesn't, but unless the Irish population of the South, loosely defined by Census, is more than half that of the Northeast, the largest amount is the same as concentration. And I'm pretty sure the Northeast's Irish percent is more than double that of the South. The percent Irish rates in most of the south are pitiful, when compared to New England.

[King of Kensington]

Boston is obviously the Irish Catholic capital of America.  

Irish (Catholic) is more of an ethnic and cultural identity in the Northeast, in the rest of the country it's more of a "generic American" ancestry.

[darklordoftech]

Irish and Scots-Irish should really be separated here.

[King of Kensington]

Irish and Scots-Irish should really be separated here.

How do you do that?  Very few report "Scots-Irish" in the census (and not all Ulster Irish are Scots-Irish either). 

[AtorBoltox]

Irish
Protestant
Pick one

[jimrtex]

Irish and Scots-Irish should really be separated here.

How do you do that?  Very few report "Scots-Irish" in the census (and not all Ulster Irish are Scots-Irish either). 

Nobody in the USA would say they were Scots-Irish. They would say they were Scotch-Irish. From 1980 to 2000 the number of Scottish ancestry plummeted as the Census Bureau treated Scotch-Irish as something other than Scottish and Irish. The number of Irish also declined, but not to the same extent.