U.S. Census Bureau

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November 8, 2011 | 1:31 PM | By

A new way of counting poverty finds Latinos to be the poorest Americans

The Pew Hispanic Center has interpreted the U.S. Census Bureau’s new alternative measure of poverty, which is intended to better reflect the cost of basic living expenses, along with the resources that people have to live on. Called the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), it uses additional factors to measure poverty than does the official federal measure.

Counted in are medical expenses, tax credits and government benefits such as food stamps, housing subsidies and school lunch programs, according to Pew’s report on the new numbers today. Geographic cost-of-living adjustments are also factored in.

The result? There are even more poor people in the U.S. than previously counted, and more of them are Latino, Asian, and foreign-born. Latinos make up the biggest group of the poor under the new measure, compared with black Americans, still the poorest as counted by the official measure.

The SPM figures released by the Census Bureau show a national poverty rate of 16 percent, higher than the official poverty rate, which is 15.2 percent. As for Latinos, the alternative measure shows 28.2 percent of Latinos living in poverty, compared with the official rate of 26.7 percent. The new data also shows substantially more poor Asians (16.7 percent versus 12.1 percent) and slightly more poor whites (11.1 percent versus 10.0). Black Americans fared better, with the alternative measure showing 25.4 percent living in poverty, compared with an official poverty rate of 27.5.

The alternative measure doesn’t replace the official one, but it does show that however the numbers crunched, a staggering number of Americans are living hand to mouth. Immigrants who have yet to become citizens are in particularly dire straits, with the data showing 32.4 percent of non-citizens living in poverty, versus 26.7 according to the official model. From the Pew report:

When the alternative measure is used, a greater share of Hispanics in 2010 lived in poverty than any other group. By contrast, when using the official poverty rate, a greater share of blacks in 2010 lived in poverty than Hispanics or any other group. Even so, no matter which measure is used, Hispanics make up nearly three-in-ten of the nation’s poor—28.6% under the official poverty measure and 28.7% under the SPM.

…The share of people born in the U.S. who are poor did not change significantly using the SPM in 2010, compared with the official measure, but the poverty rate for immigrants was higher— 25.5% versus 20.0%. For immigrants who are not U.S. citizens, the SPM poverty rate was 32.4% in 2010, while the official poverty rate was 26.7%. For naturalized citizens, the SPM poverty rate was 16.8% in 2010, compared with the official poverty rate of 11.4%.

The report notes that the Census Bureau data doesn’t explain why the poverty rates for Latinos and other ethnic groups change when the alternative measure is used. However, a footnote mentions that Latinos are less likely to have health insurance, thus spending more on out-of-pocket medical costs, and that many tend to live in parts of the country where housing is more expensive, such as California.

FILED UNDER: Economy, Pew Hispanic Center, Poverty rate, Supplemental Poverty Measure, U.S. Census Bureau
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 3, 2011 | 12:35 PM | By

Creating race: How the ‘Hispanic or Latino’ category came to be

Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

A sticker spotted on a Los Angeles freeway, February 2011

An interesting article published by the Migration Policy Institute examines the racialization of those who make up the “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish Origin” category on census forms.

Written by UC Irvine sociologist Rubén Rumbaut, a veteran chronicler of the immigrant experience, the piece delves into the history of racial and ethnic classifications, and on the impact that what began as an administrative move to classify people of Latin American ancestry has had on how they now define themselves in terms of race.

Rumbaut writes:

Are Hispanics a “race” or, more precisely, a racialized category? In fact, are they even a “they?” Is there a Latino or Hispanic ethnic group, cohesive and self-conscious, sharing a sense of peoplehood in the same way that there is an African American people in the United States? Or is it mainly administrative shorthand devised for statistical purposes; a one-size-fits-all label that subsumes diverse peoples and identities?

The article details the history of “Hispanic” census self-identification, which dates to the late 1960s. A Spanish-origin identification category was added to the 1970 census long-form questionnaire, first tested in the November 1969 Current Population Survey. From the start the results were uneven, with disparity between who identified as “Hispanic” and those with a Spanish surname:

For example, in the Southwest, only 74 percent of those who identified themselves as Hispanic had Spanish surnames, while 81 percent of those with Spanish surnames identified themselves as Hispanic. In the rest of the country, 61 percent of those who self-identified as Hispanic had Spanish surnames, and a mere 46 percent of those with Spanish surnames self-identified as Hispanic.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Migration Policy Institute, Ruben Rumbaut, U.S. Census Bureau, UC Irvine
January 4, 2011 | 11:36 AM | By

Census Bureau history lesson: The immigrant population over time

Photo courtesy of Erica Marshall/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A “buttonhook eye inspection” for infection eye diseases at Ellis Island

For those who love statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau has compiled a nifty list of historical census facts regarding the nation’s foreign-born population, as hot of a newsworthy topic today as it was in the nineteenth century.

Here’s nifty historical fact number one:

The foreign-born population accounted for 10 percent of the total U.S. population in 1850, and 15 percent in1890. Today, the foreign-born comprise 12 percent of the population.

In other words, immigrants are no bigger part of the population than they were 111 years ago, and comprise only a slightly larger piece of the pie today than they did before the Civil War.

Also in the numbers, though, is one telling difference that may well influence perceptions: The ethnic and racial makeup of the foreign born.

From another item on the list:

Between 1960 and 2000, the percentage of foreign-born U.S. residents of European descent decreased from 75 to 16 percent. At the same time, the percentage of foreign-born U.S. residents born in Latin America increased from 6 to 51 percent.

The census stats provide a revealing little window into how we perceive immigrants and immigration, past and present. There are some good links, too, including one that leads to the 1850 census.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 2010 Census, Foreign-born population, U.S. Census Bureau