WASHINGTON — Hispanics, the nation’s largest and fastest growing minority group, now account for about one in four children younger than 5 in the United States, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today.
The increase from nearly one in five in 2000 has broad implications for governments, communities and schools nationwide, suggesting that the meteoric rise in the Hispanic population that demographers forecast for midcentury will occur even sooner among younger generations.
“Hispanics have both a larger proportion of people in their child-bearing years and tend to have slightly more children,” said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center and co-author of a recent study predicting the Hispanic population will double from 15 percent today to 30 percent by 2050.
“So this means that in five years, a quarter of the 5- to 9-year-olds will be Hispanic, and in 10 years a quarter of the 10- to 14-year-olds will be Hispanic. It’s just going to move up through the age distribution with each successive cohort being slightly more Hispanic,” Passel said.
Hispanics account for more than half the children younger than 5 in New Mexico and California, where their share of the overall state population is 44 and 36 percent, respectively. In Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado, about one-third or more of children younger than 5 are Hispanic.
The census figures showed a slight drop in immigration to the United States by Hispanics from July 1, 2006, to July 1, 2007, versus the previous 12-months. That suggests the U.S. economic slowdown might have had some impact on immigration.
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