Pew Hispanic Center Publication: Latinos Account for Half of U.S. Population Growth Since 2000 (great map)

Since 2000 Hispanics have accounted for more than half (50.5%) of the overall population growth in the United States — a significant new demographic milestone for the nation’s largest minority group. During the 1990s, the Hispanic population also expanded rapidly, but in that decade its growth accounted for less than 40% of the nation’s total population increase. In a reversal of past trends, Latino population growth in the new century has been more a product of the natural increase (births minus deaths) of the existing population than it has been of new international migration. As of mid-2007, Hispanics accounted for 15.1% of the total U.S. population.

Since 2000 many Latinos have settled in counties that once had few Latinos, continuing a pattern that began in the previous decade. But there are subtle differences in Hispanic settlement patterns in the current decade compared with those of the 1990s. The dispersion of Latinos in the new century has tilted more to counties in the West and the Northeast. Despite the new tilt, however, the South accounted for a greater share of overall Latino population growth than any other region in the new century. There is also an ever-growing concentration of Hispanic population growth in metropolitan areas. These findings emerge from the Pew Hispanic Center’s analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2007 county population estimates, supplemented by 1990 and 2000 county population counts from the Decennial Censuses. “

• Grass Roots: Latino community preparing for Census knock on the door
• Pan American Bank Backs Complete Count Effort and Latino Census Summit
• The purchasing power of Hispanics is growing at a rate nearly 3 times as fast as that of the general population in Arizona and nationwide, said an Arizona State University business expert who has studied the market for 14 years.
• Latino population growth adds to House seats – 6 states expected to gain congressional slots due to surge in Hispanic numbers
• Trend Toward Smaller Families in Latin America – The number of people per household in Latin America will fall by 18 percent by 2020, according to a study released in this capital Tuesday by consulting firm Euromonitor International.
• Latinos make up a combined 77% of the population growth in the eleven states projected to lose a House seat – would have fared worse had Latinos not moved there in record numbers
• After the 2010 Census, new Members of Congress in states like Georgia and South Carolina as well as Arizona and Texas will owe their positions, in part, to the expanding Latino population.
• Report from America’s Voice: The New Constituents… How Latinos Will Shape Congressional Apportionmention After the 2010 Census
• Magnet States for Hispanics in 2008: Marketing Implications – Felipe Korzenny
• Op Ed: Make Sure Latino Families Count
• ASU, ALRE release major study on Arizona’s Latino population – (direct link to report & powerpoint)
• Consuls from Latin America will help with the census
• The 2010 Census and Puerto Ricans: Statistical Policy Issues and Politics – Event in NYC – 6 p.m., Thurs., Nov. 12
• Lack of info — not fear — hurts census
• Hispanic population growing in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
• Hispanics Dodge a Bullet – Hispanics would have been hurt in critical ways by the proposed change to the census
• A Victory in the Senate with the Halt of the Vitter Amendment – LULAC
• Like California’s 30 years ago, Oregon’s growing Latino population is reaching a tipping point: A critical mass of Latino professionals is starting to organize and influence state and local politics. – dubbed Latino Agenda for Action
• Senate Democrats Thursday blocked a GOP attempt to require next year’s census forms to ask people whether they are U.S. citizens – Vitter’s attempts fail
• In a new book Migration and the Transformation of the Southern Workplace Since 1945 (University of Florida Press), University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Professor of History Colin Davis, Ph.D., along with his co-editor, Robert Cassanello, present a collection of seven essays that examine the impact that migration and globalization are having on labor in the American South.