[8] The majority of Filipinos are lowland[broken anchor] Austronesians,[9] while the Aetas (Negritos), as well as other highland groups form a minority.

Some ethnic groups that have been in the Philippines for centuries before Spanish and American colonial rule have assimilated or intermixed.

The ethnic groups include Han Chinese, Arabs, Indians and Japanese which form parts of the population.

Nine other indigenous languages have at least one million native speakers: Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Bicolano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Maranao, Maguindanao, and Tausug.

[12]: 177 [13][14] 20,000 were Chinese migrant traders,[15] at different times: around 15,600 individuals were Latino soldier-colonists who were cumulatively sent from Peru and Mexico and they were shipped to the Philippines annually,[16][17] 3,000 were Japanese residents,[18] and 600 were pure Spaniards from Europe.

[19] There was a large but unknown number of South Asian Filipinos, as the majority of the slaves imported into the archipelago were from Bengal and India,[20] adding Dravidian and Indo-Aryan speaking South Indians and Indo-European speaking Bengalis into the ethnic mix.

[22] The book, "Intercolonial Intimacies Relinking Latin/o America to the Philippines, 1898–1964 By Paula C. Park" citing "Forzados y reclutas: los criollos novohispanos en Asia (1756–1808)" gave a higher number of later Mexican soldier-immigrants to the Philippines, pegging the number at 35,000 immigrants in the 1700s in a population of only 1.5 Million thus forming 2.33% of the population.

[25] Despite the number of Mixed Spanish-Filipino descent being the lowest, they may be more common than expected as many Spaniards often had Filipino concubines and mistresses and they frequently produced children out of wedlock.

[26]: 272 In the late 1700s to early 1800s, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, an Agustinian Friar, in his Two Volume Book: "Estadismo de las islas Filipinas"[27][28] compiled a census of the Spanish-Philippines based on the tribute counts (Which represented an average family of seven to ten children[29] and two parents, per tribute)[30] and came upon the following statistics: The Spanish-Filipino population as a proportion of the provinces widely varied; with as high as 19% of the population of Tondo province [27]: 539  (The most populous province and former name of Manila), to Pampanga 13.7%,[27]: 539  Cavite at 13%,[27]: 539  Laguna 2.28%,[27]: 539  Batangas 3%,[27]: 539  Bulacan 10.79%,[27]: 539  Bataan 16.72%,[27]: 539  Ilocos 1.38%,[28]: 31  Pangasinan 3.49%,[28]: 31  Albay 1.16%,[28]: 54  Cebu 2.17%,[28]: 113  Samar 3.27%,[28]: 113 Iloilo 1%,[28]: 113  Capiz 1%,[28]: 113  Bicol 20%,[31] and Zamboanga 40%.

Eventually, everybody belonging to these non-native categories diminished because they were assimilated into and chose to self-identify as pure Filipinos.

[36][37] That would explain the abrupt drop of otherwise high Chinese, Spanish and mestizo percentages across the country by the time of the first American census in 1903.

In 1995, the POPCEN was launched, undertaken at the month of September, The data provided the bases for the Internal Revenue Allocation to local government units, and for the creation of new legislative areas.

[61] The following table, based on the annual official data sourced from Philippine Statistics Authority, shows the growing annual trend of illegitimate child births by percentages: First time single mothers are mainly due to the teenage pregnancy among girls in the 17 to 19 years old age bracket, thus getting trapped in the cycle of poverty and abuse.

[76][77] The reasons for the high illegitimate birthrate and single motherhood include the unpopularity of artificial contraception[78] inadequate sex education, delays in implementing birth control legislation and a machismo attitude among many Filipino males.

[79] The Catholic Church in Philippines opposes sex before or outside marriage, and the use of modern contraceptive and the passing of laws allowing for divorce.

It continues to mix religion with politics since the time of Spanish friar, while Catholic priests continue to have scandals by having affairs and by fathering offspring with women amidst allegations of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church clergy.

[80] Hence, there is a gap between the [relatively more orthodox] scriptural Catholic religion and the version practiced by Filipinos in daily life.

[80] 84% Filipinos are Catholic, and what Filipinos actually do in practice is different from what they believe in,[80] i.e. Filipinos practice a liberal cultural attitude towards sexual relationships while also contrastingly practicing orthodox Catholic religious belief which opposes the modern scientific contraceptives and laws based on the modern values, resulting in lack of access to family planning methods, stigmatization of medical abortions, a high number of unwanted pregnancies, lack of access to safe modern medical abortions, high and still rising trend of illegitimate newborn birth rate.

Other large ethnic groups include Filipinos of Japanese, Indian, Chinese, Spanish, and American descent.

There are more than 175 ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines, each with their own, identity, literature, tradition, music, dances, foods, beliefs, and history, but which form part of the tapestry of Filipino culture.

Nevertheless, a 2019 Anthropology Study by Matthew Go, published in the Journal of Human Biology, using physical anthropology, estimated that, 72.7% of Filipinos are Asian, 12.7% of Filipinos can be classified as Hispanic (Latin-American Mestizos or Austronesian-Spanish Mestizos), 7.3% as Indigenous American, African at 4.5% and European at 2.7%.

[5] Consequently, English is widely spoken and understood, although fluency has decreased as the prevalence of Tagalog in primary and secondary educational institutions has increased.

The Philippine Statistics Authority in October 2015 reported that 80.58% of the total Filipino population were Roman Catholics, 10.8% were Protestant and 5.57% were Islamic.

Roman Catholics and Protestants were converted during the four centuries of Western influence by Spain, and the United States.