2010 Census

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January 13, 2012 | 11:36 AM | By

The nation’s immigrant population, illustrated

Source: Immigration Policy Center

As far as interactive maps and graphics charting the nation’s immigrant population go, the Immigration Policy Center has released the granddaddy of them all this week. Based on census, economic and other data, a 50-state interactive map on the IPC homepage gives way to detailed state-by-state compilations of demographic, economic, educational, entrepreneurial, political and other information on the foreign-born, Latino and Asian populations of each state.

Each state page is accompanied by a downloadable infographic, like the one above for California, and a state fact sheet. Just a few highlights from the California fact sheet:

  • Immigrants comprised 34.6% of the state’s workforce in 2010 (or 6.5 million workers), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
  • 45.6% of immigrants (or 4.6 million people) in California were naturalized U.S. citizens in 2010 (up from 31.2% in 1990)—meaning that they are eligible to vote.
  • Immigrants in California pay roughly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year. In California, “the average immigrant-headed household contributes a net $2,679 annually to Social Security, which is $539 more than the average US-born household.”
  • Together, businesses owned by Latinos and Asians comprised more than one-quarter of all businesses in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 Survey of Business Owners.
  • The number of immigrants in California with a college degree increased by 42.8% between 2000 and 2009, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.

IPC is the policy and research arm of the American Immigration Council, an Washington, D.C. nonprofit that’s connected to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The interactive map can be downloaded here.

FILED UNDER: 2010 Census, American Immigration Council, Census, Immigration Policy Center
November 1, 2011 | 12:10 PM | By

Alabama, So. Carolina lead nation in Latino population increase – and strict immigration laws

Photo by Maurice Michael/Flickr (Creative Commons)

The states with two of the nation’s most restrictive new anti-illegal immigration laws also happen to be the two states that saw the biggest jump in their Latino population during the last decade.

Alabama saw a 145 percent increase in its Latino population between 2000 an 2010, according to census data, the second highest Latino growth rate in the nation. Its HB 56 immigration law, which remains partially blocked but has still caused a rash of school absences and a labor crisis in the fields as Latino workers flee the state, contains more restrictive provisions than Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 on which it is modeled.

South Carolina, just sued by the federal government over its new SB 1070-inspired law allowing police to check for immigration status, saw the nation’s biggest percent jump in Latino population growth: 148 percent. And Georgia, where an anti-illegal immigration law known as HB 87 was partially blocked in court over the summer but still caused a labor crisis, is not far behind. That state saw its Latino population grow 96 percent between 2000 and 2010.

The growth didn’t happen all at once. All of these southern states, along with others, saw very sharp increases in Latino settlement during the previous decade as well. Many of the newcomers were foreign-born immigrants, driven there by jobs and prospects that were becoming scarcer in the more crowded, expensive western states. The ensuing culture clash and racial tensions, percolating since Latinos began settling in the South in large numbers, is more than partly behind these far-from-the border states going the way of Arizona.

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FILED UNDER: 2010 Census, Alabama, Alabama immigration law, Pew Hispanic Center, South Carolina, South Carolina immigration law
July 25, 2011 | 5:43 PM | By

American snapshot: Echo Park

Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

The Costa Alegre restaurant, a long established fixture on Sunset Boulevard, advertises its new vegetarian menu – yet another sign of changing times in Echo Park.

The neighborhood bucked the national trend in the 2010 Census, with its Latino population shrinking over the last decade, and its non-Latino white population growing.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, 2010 Census, Echo Park, Gentrification, Mexican food
July 19, 2011 | 10:02 AM | By

The nation’s ethnic-generational divide, illustrated

There’s a generational component to the racial and ethnic shift taking place in the United States population, with minority youths poised to become a majority in the not-too-distant future.

The growing gap between the nation’s aging non-Latino white population and its young non-white population is illustrated in this interactive chart from PolicyLink, an Oakland-based social and economic advocacy nonprofit. While the majority of U.S. youths are of color, the majority of seniors are non-Latino whites, a combination that poses unique policy and political challenges.

The chart is the most recent interactive population graphic based on census data that the organization has released as part of a series titled “America’s Tomorrow.” Another was a U.S. map illustrating the changing racial makeup of counties as projected from 1990 to 2040.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 2010 Census, PolicyLink
July 6, 2011 | 10:45 AM | By

More on Latinos and race: The rise of the Latino ‘American Indian’

Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

Car sticker seen on an L.A. freeway, February 2011

A recent post highlighted a Migration Policy Institute article that explored the origin of the “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish Origin” category on census forms, and in the 40 years that Latinos have been asked to identify in terms of Spanish origin, the varying ways in which they have also come to identify in terms of race.

The “Hispanic or Latino” category is an ethnic category, not a racial one. In the 2000 census, slightly under half of the 35.2 million Latinos counted reported their race as white. The rest of the racial categories they can choose from may or may not apply. Not surprisingly perhaps, 43 percent of Latinos in 2000 identified themselves as “other race.”

But a fascinating piece in the New York Times this weekend reported a rise in the number of Latinos identifying themselves as “American Indian” in the 2010 census. From the story:

Seventy percent of the 57,000 American Indians living in New York City are of Hispanic origin, according to census figures. That is 40,000 American Indians from Latin America — up 70 percent from a decade ago.

The trend is part of a demographic growth taking place nationwide of Hispanics using “American Indian” to identify their race. The number of Amerindians — a blanket term for indigenous people of the Americas, North and South — who also identify themselves as Hispanic has tripled since 2000, to 1.2 million from 400,000.

A professor of Latin American history interviewed attributed this in part to shifting migration trends, with more recent immigrants having come from regions of Latin America with large indigenous populations, such as southern Mexico and Central America.

But the census shift, if slight, is significant not only in terms of who has settled here, but how Latinos who are already here perceive and identify themselves. A second-generation Mexican American woman, Nancy Perez, explained that her family decided to go with “American Indian” because “if you go back far enough, we are indigenous:”

“We felt that there were very limited options to identify with,” Ms. Perez, 32, said. “So out of the options available, that was the best one.”

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, 2010 Census, Hispanic or Latino, Racial identity
June 1, 2011 | 4:35 PM | By

Latinos and population growth: Five interesting tidbits

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Screen shot of U.S. Census Bureau map showing state-by-state 2010 data, including ethnic populations

News about the nation’s growing Latino population has been rolling out almost continuously since the results of the 2010 Census were announced late last year.

First there was the speculation about who was driving population growth in some of the nation’s most politically influential states. When ethnic and racial data was released earlier this year, it was revealed that Latinos in the United States now number more than 50 million.

The last few days have brought a fresh crop of Latino population growth headlines, these stemming from new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week. The gist: The Latino population in the U.S. rose by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010, growing four times faster than the nation’s overall growth rate and accounting for half the nation’s population increase of 27.3 million since 2000.

Some states have seen more growth than others, particularly in the South and Midwest (though in California, Latinos were outpaced in growth by Asian Americans).

That’s the big picture, but there have been these interesting news tidbits as well:

  • 28 large cities in the United States now have a Latino majority: Fox News Latino reported that Latinos now make up the majority of the population in 28 U.S. cities of more than 100,000 residents. Most of these cities are in California, Texas, Florida and New Jersey. In California, these cities include Santa Ana, Salinas, Oxnard and Pomona, all of which are more than 70 percent Latino.
  • The Latino population percentage of East Los Angeles rivals that of Puerto Rico: It’s not just major cities that have notable Latino majorities. According to the same Fox story, unincorporated East Los Angeles is 97 percent Latino, “a percentage surpassed only by Puerto Rico, where 99 percent of citizens are Hispanic.”
  • Texas has the most Latino-majority counties in the country: Out of 82 Latino-majority counties in the United States, 51 are in Texas, the Houston Chronicle reported. Not surprisingly, the census results have led to redistricting battles in the Lone Star State. A redistricting map proposed by a legislative redistricting committee would add two Latino-majority districts in Central and South Texas.
  • More Latinos could represent more Democratic votes – or not: A former Obama campaign operative referred to the Latino population growth as a potential “huge weapon” in coming elections in a Huffington Post piece. At the same time, Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas told Politico that this could also mean more Republican voters, pointing out the recent victories of Latino GOP candidates from New Mexico, Nevada and Florida, all states with large Latino populations.
  • Latinos aside, Indian Americans are the fastest-growing Asian group: While Chinese Americans still make up the largest Asian demographic in the country, with 22.8% of the country’s Asian population, Indian Americans have had the most population growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Asian Americans now make up 4.8 of the overall U.S. population.

Latinos account for 16.3 of the overall population. The Pew Hispanic Center has published a chart comparing the nation’s 2000 and 2010 populations by race and ethnicity.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 2010 Census, Latino population gorwth, U.S. Census Bureau
May 12, 2011 | 10:58 AM | By

Report: U.S. population growth almost exclusively minority-driven

Art by Eric Fischer/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A color-coded ethnicity map of the L.A. area

We already know that Latinos accounted for more than half the nation’s population growth in the last decade.

Today the Pew Research Center broadened the minority growth picture in its Daily Number feature, distilling this nugget from the 2010 Census: The U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2010 was driven almost exclusively by racial and ethnic minorities.

From the post:

Overall, racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 91.7% of the nation’s population growth over the past 10 years.

The non-Hispanic white population has accounted for only the remaining 8.3% of the nation’s growth. Hispanics were responsible for 56% of the nation’s population growth over the past decade. There are now 50.5 million Latinos living in the U.S. according to the 2010 Census, up from 35.3 million in 2000, making Latinos the nation’s largest minority group and 16.3% of the total population. There are 196.8 million whites in the U.S. (accounting for 63.7% of the total population), 37.7 million blacks (12.2%) and 14.5 million Asians (4.7%). Six million non-Hispanics, or 1.9% of the U.S. population, checked more than one race.

An accompanying chart breaks down the 2010 vs. 2000 population for all of these groups, including those identifying as “two or more races.”

Census numbers released earlier this year showed that the United States is on course to become a majority-minority nation, with non-white minority children accounting for 48.6 percent of the children born in this country between July 2008 and July 2009,  an increase from just two years earlier.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, 2010 Census, Pew Research Center
April 27, 2011 | 11:11 AM | By

Latino, Asian voters still lag in turnout in spite of numbers

Source: Pew Hispanic Center

A report released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center on the Latino electorate in 2010 led to very different headlines as news outlets reported the results, and for good reason.

“Latinos voted in record numbers in 2010 elections,” read the headline in USA Today. The headline in the Washington Post, “Latino and Asian voters mostly sat out 2010 election, report says,” indicated a different story altogether.

But both interpretations are correct. According to the report, more than 6.6 million Latinos voted in last year’s election, setting a record for a midterm election. Latino voters also made up a larger share of the electorate than in any previous midterm election. They represented 6.9 percent of all voters, up from 5.8 percent in 2006.

All that said, Latinos showed poorly at the polls when considering their sheer numbers – more than 50 million of them in the U.S., per the 2010 Census. From a summary of the Pew voter report:

However, even though more Latinos than ever are participating in the nation’s elections, their representation among the electorate remains below their representation in the general population. In 2010, 16.3% of the nation’s population was Latino, but only 10.1% of eligible voters and fewer than 7% of voters were Latino.

This gap is driven by two demographic factors—youth and non-citizenship. More than one third of Latinos (34.9%) are younger than the voting age of 18. And an additional 22.4% are of voting age, but are not U.S. citizens. As a result, the share of the Latino population eligible to vote is smaller than it is among any other group. Just 42.7% of the nation’s Latino population is eligible to vote, while more than three-in-four (77.7%) of whites, two-thirds of blacks (67.2%) and more than half of Asians (52.8%) are eligible to vote.

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FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, 2010 Census, Asian voters, Latino voters, Pew Hispanic Center