What makes an American?

The question is asked in a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center that looks at a population group of 7.7 million making a historical mark – Hispanics between the ages of 16 to 25.

"Never before in the nation's history has a minority group made up so much of our young population," said Paul Taylor, director of the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center and the executive vice president of the Pew Research Center.

Yet when these young people were asked for a term to first describe themselves, only a quarter chose "American," according to a national survey of 2,012 people. If they were the U.S.-born children of immigrants, the American description rose to one-third. If they were the grandchildren of immigrants or even more removed from migration, half were likely to identify themselves as American.

Fully 40 percent of Texans in that age bloc are Hispanic, according to the report titled "Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America." And one in four newborns in the United States is Hispanic.

Ilan Stavans, author of The Hispanic Condition and an Amherst College professor, has called such identity issues "the crossroads of yo soy and I am." But Stavans said he was surprised by Pew's findings.

"The way we come together is changing," the Mexico City native said. "We can now become Americans by stressing where we come from. But 40 years ago, we needed to forget where we came from to be Americans."

Culture crosses borders easily, acknowledged Taylor, with migrants, especially Mexicans, and their children easily reaching out to relatives through e-mail, YouTube, and other communications. And that may play a role in keeping cultural identity strong, he said.

More than half of young Latinos, or 52 percent, identify themselves first by their family's country of origin, according to the survey and study titled "Between Two Worlds." An additional 20 percent generally use the terms "Hispanic" or "Latino" first when describing themselves.

Alexis Martinez, a 21-year-old at Southern Methodist University, is the child of a Mexican father and a Mexican-American mother. "I usually say Mexican and not even Mexican-American," she said. And she uses Hispanic with some hesitation. "I am not from Spain," she said.

Martinez has been to Mexico only once. Her Spanish is a work in progress, though it's her undergraduate major. She cares enough about the identity issue to ask her father what language he dreams in. "And he dreams in English," she said. "Isn't that interesting?"

Most Latino youths are not immigrants, and are like Martinez, the report noted. Two-thirds were born in the United States. They do better than their foreign-born counterparts in key areas. They're more English proficient and less likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty or become a teen parent.

As Latino youths embrace English, they don't abandon the Spanish language, the study found. Among the second generation, eight in 10 speak Spanish, too. Even among third-generation youths, nearly four in 10 retain the ability to speak and understand Spanish, despite the fact that they were born in the United States to native-born parents who are mostly English-dominant, the report said.

And when it comes to music, nearly a third of third-generation Latino youths said that at least half of the songs they listen to are in Spanish.

There were sobering findings, too.

On a number of other measures, U.S.-born Latino youths do no better than the foreign-born, and on some fronts, they do worse, the study said.

Native-born Latino youths are about twice as likely as the foreign-born to have ties to a gang or to have gotten in a fight or carried a weapon in the past year, the report said.

Top three terms Latino youth use to describe themselves

Latino youth, 16-25

52% By country of origin, or parents' or grandparents' country of origin

20% Hispanic or Latino

25% American

First generation

72% By country of origin, or parents' or grandparents' country of origin

22% Hispanic or Latino

3% American

Second generation

41% By country of origin, or parents' or grandparents' country of origin

21% Hispanic or Latino

33% American

Third generation or higher

32% Country of origin

15% Hispanic or Latino

50% American

SOURCE: Pew Hispanic Center; interviews in Los Angeles; San Jose, Calif.; Chicago; and the Washington, D.C., area