Italian-American
| Total population | |
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| Regions with significant populations | |
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New York, New Jersey, New England, Pennsylvania California, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, with growing populations in Southwest and Southeast. |
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| Religion | |
| 72% Roman Catholic; 14% Protestant, 2% Christian – unspecified; 14% other | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Italian Canadians, Italian Argentines, Italian Uruguayans, Italian Brazilians, Italian Mexicans, Italian Australians, Italian South Africans, Italian Britons, Sicilian Americans and other Italians |
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| ^a Foreign-born population only | |
Italian Americans (Italian: italoamericani or italo-americani [ˌitalo.ameriˈkaːni]) are an ethnic group comprising Americans who have full or partial ancestry from Italy, especially those who identify with that ancestry, along with their cultural characteristics. Italian Americans are the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States (not including American ethnicity, an ethnonym used by many in the United States; overall, Italian Americans rank seventh, behind German American, Irish American, African American, English American, American, and Mexican American).
About 5.5 million Italians immigrated to the United States from 1820 to 2004. Immigration began in earnest during the 1870s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated (1870–79: 46,296) than during the five previous decades altogether (1820–69: 22,627). The 1870s were followed by the greatest surge of immigration, which occurred in the period between 1880 and 1914 and brought more than 4 million Italians to America. This period of large scale immigration ended abruptly with the onset of the First World War in 1914 and, except for one year (1922), never resumed. Further immigration would be greatly limited by a number of restrictive laws passed by Congress in the 1920s.
Approximately 84% of the Italian immigrants came from Southern Italy and Sicily. These were largely agricultural and overpopulated regions, where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign misrule, and an oppressive taxation system imposed on the South after Italian unification in 1861. After unification, the Italian government initially encouraged emigration to relieve economic pressures in the South. After the American Civil War, which resulted in over a half million killed or wounded, immigrant workers were recruited from Italy and elsewhere to fill the labor shortage caused by the war. In the United States, most Italians began their new lives as manual laborers in Eastern cities, mining camps and in agriculture. Italian Americans gradually moved from the lower rungs of the economic scale in the first generation (1890s–1920s) to a level comparable to the national average by 1970. By 1990, more than 65% of Italian Americans were managerial, professional, or white-collar workers. The Italian-American communities have often been characterized by strong ties with family, the Catholic Church, fraternal organizations and political parties. Today, over 17 million Americans claim Italian ancestry, third only to Brazil with 31 million, and Argentina, which has 24 million people with Italian roots.
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Wikipedia