Old labels just don't stick in 21st century

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Lucero Murillo is a single working mother who saved enough money to buy a modest home last year. She moved out of a neighborhood of recent immigrants on the west side of Columbus and into an older, working-class residential area on the city's south side.

The fact that Murillo, 35, is Hispanic matters less today than it did 10 years ago — at least to businesses looking for customers. What really counts is that she's a homeowner and has a job to pay the mortgage.

As the U.S. population grows more diverse and as immigrants move up the economic ladder, race and ethnicity are becoming less important than education, income, home ownership, age and lifestyles. In fact, as Hispanics, blacks and Asian-Americans increasingly move to middle-class suburbs and prosperous neighborhoods, they're identified more by their lifestyles and spending habits than by their ancestry.

Marketing experts have caught on to this and other dramatic changes in American life since 1990: record immigration, aging, suburban sprawl and rising numbers of singles, single parents and households without kids.<snip>

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-12-16-who-we-are_x.htm