41.9 Million and Counting: A Statistical View of Hispanics at Mid-Decade

The Report

"This has been a notable year for Hispanics in the United States. The large-scale immigration rallies in the spring and the policy debate over immigration drew the attention of the American public -- as well as a wider global audience -- to the social, legal and economic complexities often associated with a population group that is both growing and changing very quickly. So, where do Hispanics in the U.S. stand and where are they headed?

The Pew Hispanic Center's Statistical Portrait of Hispanics at Mid-Decade offers a detailed look at a range of social, economic and housing characteristics tabulated from a new Census Bureau data source. The American Community Survey, fully implemented for the first time in 2005, now draws on a yearly sample of about three million addresses, making it by far the largest household survey in the United States. Previously, demographic data on this scale was only available once every 10 years when a full census was conducted.

The statistical profile, in the form of 32 tables, highlights the ever-increasing importance of chronicling Hispanic trends longitudinally as well as according to differences in place of origin, nativity, age and gender. Understanding the internal diversity of the Latino population is proving indispensable to any assessment of its current status and most certainly its future in the latter half of the decade or beyond."

English Usage Among Hispanics in the United States

From The Pew Hispanic Center.

The report "documented that nearly all Hispanic adults born in the United States of immigrant parents report they are fluent in English. Nearly all Hispanic adults born in the United States of immigrant parents report they are fluent in English. By contrast, only a small minority of their parents describe themselves as skilled English speakers. This finding of a dramatic increase in English-language ability from one generation of Hispanics to the next emerges from a new analysis of six Pew Hispanic Center surveys conducted this decade among a total of more than 14,000 Latino adults. The surveys show that fewer than one-in-four (23%) Latino immigrants reports being able to speak English very well. However, fully 88% of their U.S.-born adult children report that they speak English very well. Among later generations of Hispanic adults, the figure rises to 94%. Reading ability in English shows a similar trend."

Check out the full report at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/82.pdf.