Arab American Studies

Web Resources

Background Articles

The Diversity of Arab Americans

The Diversity of Arab Americans

Where in the US do the majority of Arab Americans Live? 

Population Demographic by State

Information on this page is taken directly from and credited to The Arab American Institute using (and adjusting for undercount) the 2020 US Census data.

Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but up to 95% live in metropolitan areas. New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis are the top six metropolitan areas. Nearly 75% of all Arab Americans live in just twelve states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and 85% of Arabs in the U.S. are citizens. While the community traces its roots to every Arab country, the majority of Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq.

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where arab americans live in the US

The Diversity of Arab Americans

Ancestry Breakdown: How Do Arab Americans Identify Themselves?

Population Demographic by National Ancestry

Information on this page is taken directly from and credited to The Arab American Institute

"Primary ethnic identification is derived from responses to the ancestry question on the American Community Survey (ACS). ACS data on “Arabs” include the responses: Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian, Moroccan, Arab or Arabic. The following countries are collapsed as “Other Arab”: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. As an ethnic community, Arab Americans can identify with any racial group and AAI’s methodology uses an accurate and inclusive definition of Arab Americans, including Afro-Arabs and transnational communities. As such, AAI includes the Arabic-speaking countries of Comoros, Mauritania, Somalia, and Sudan, and the transnational communities of Assyrians/Chaldeans who are not currently aggregated as Arab in ACS data."

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Ancestry

The Diversity of Arab Americans

Religion

"Arab Americans are religiously diverse, much like the Arab world. Although the earliest immigrants were mostly Christian with smaller numbers of Muslims, today the Arab American community is comprised of Christian, Muslims, Druze, Jews, Mandaen and other faiths, along with secular identities." (according to the Arab American National Museum)

Click on image to enlarge. A link to the page with recordings is below the image.

arab american voices on religion arab american national museum