The following article lists sovereign states, dependent territories and some quasi-states according to their proportional ethnic population composition. Ethnic classifications vary from country to country and are therefore not comparable across countries. While some countries make classifications based on broad ancestry groups or characteristics such as skin color (e.g., the white ethnic category in the United States and some other countries), other countries use various ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or religious factors for classification. Ethnic groups may be subdivided into subgroups, which may or may not be identified as independent ethnic groups in their own right, depending on the source.
A number of countries also do not collect any estimates on the ethnic composition of their population (like France) and the ethnic composition of the population is of high political sensitivity in many countries, which is why reliable data are not available for many countries. Therefore, in some cases, indicators such as citizenship/nationality, ancestry or origin, country of birth, or language are used as alternative indicators. The data in the list are also of variable quality and timeliness, as only irregularly updated estimates are available for many countries. Most of the entries in the list come from the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook database or from national statistical offices.