Statistics and Growth of the Hispanic community in the United States

If we look at the young Latinos, the numbers are more impressive than those of the Latin community are in general. In a recent study, the Hispanic Center (PEW) published on May 31st 2009, concluded that Hispanics under 18 years of age represent 22% of the Hispanic population, more than one for every five of the population in the United States. These numbers reflect a significant increase since 1980, when the same demographic group represented just 9%.

Pew also affirms that in the same manner in which the numbers changed, the demographic characteristics also changed.
There are about 16 million Hispanic children and youngsters under 18 years of age in the United States, 52% of this group are part of a "second generation" according to PEW in its study "Hispanic children: The development of the second generation, based on the census bureau statistics".

This numbers show that the children belong to at least one parent born outside the United States, typically from immigrants that came from Mexico, Central America, Latin America or the Caribbean during the immigration wave of 1980.

About 11% of Latin children are "first generation", born in a foreign country, and 37% of the Latin children are "third generation or greater", born of Hispanic parents born in the United States.

These changes, the PEW study shows, are important because the social, economic and demographic characteristics of the Latin children "vary substantially according to the status of the generational background".

According to the study, two thirds of the 1.7 million of Latin children born outside the United States are illegal immigrants while none of the 6 million children that belong to the third generation are, since they were born in the country where their parents where born, and both are American Citizens.

Among the children that belong to the second generation, almost 4 out of 10 have at least one legal immigrant parent and live in families with a mixed immigration status.

The projections of the census bureau indicate that toward the year 2025, almost three of each ten children in this country will have Latin ethnic origin.

During the last two decades, the numbers show, the Latin community had an impressive rate of growth because of births and new immigration.

Larry D'Arrigo