Native-born and foreign-born people in the United States are just as likely to have a college degree, but more foreign-born are engineers, officials say.

The analysis, based on 2010 American Community Survey estimates, found 48.5 million, or 28 percent, of the 170.7 million native-born population age 25 and older, and 9.1 million, or 27 percent, of the 33.6 million foreign-born population age 25 and older, had a bachelor's degree or higher.

Thirty-three percent of native-born residents had a degree in a science or engineering field, while 46 percent of those who are foreign-born had a degree in science or engineering. The difference was also pronounced in other degree fields, such as computers, mathematics and statistics, the report said.

The country of birth with the largest number of science and engineering degree holders was India with 747,000, or 18 percent of the foreign-born population with science and engineering degrees, followed by China with 516,000, or 12 percent. Other country-of-birth groups with more than 100,000 science and engineering degrees were the Philippines, South Korea, Mexico, Vietnam, Canada and Iran, the report said.

The native-born population includes anyone who was a U.S. citizen at birth -- born in the United States, Puerto Rico, a U.S. island area (U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa or the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands) or abroad of a U.S. citizen parent or parents, the census said.

The foreign-born population includes anyone who was not a U.S. citizen at birth, including those who have become U.S. citizens through naturalization.