Saturday, December 21, 2024

New Statistics among Latinos: Highest and Lowest Income, Poverty Rates


A recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center released that Latinos earn the largest median household income in the Washington, D.C. metro area (as high as $62,000) and earn the least in the Texas Brownsville-Harlingen-San Benito metro area (as low as $28,600).

Not surprisingly, the Brownsville, Texas metro region has the highest rate of poverty among Latinos in general, whereas Washington, D.C. and Baltimore have the lowest rate of poverty.

“We have more work to do to reduce poverty in the Latino community, especially among children and families,” says Leticia Miranda, Senior Policy Advisor at the National Council of La Raza.

However, the report also highlights that nearly 74% of all Latinos in the nation are U.S. citizens, either by birth or naturalization.  And as previously reported on La Plaza, Latinos took up 60% of the 2.3 million jobs added in 2011.

“How Latinos mature, what schools they go to and how they do in the labor market will have implications for us all in this century,” says Mark Lopez of another Pew Hispanic Center study. “A quarter of all children are Hispanic, and in the future they will make up a greater share of the nation’s workforce.”

Southern California Public Radio/Multi-American Blog