The changing demography of latino immigrants in the united states  (Page 4/8)

Having provided a brief historical overview of immigration from Latin America and especially Mexico in the United States, we now offer a discussion of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Latin American and Mexican immigrants across three decades (1980, 1990, and 2000).

Data

Data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 U.S. censuses are used to conduct the analysis. In particular, the data are from the 5% Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) for each of these decades. The PUMS consists of a 5% sample of individuals enumerated in the respective decennial census. Because of its focus on individuals and its large-scale nature (the 2000 5% PUMS contains over 14 million individuals), the PUMS data represent the best data source for gaining an understanding of the demographic and socioeconomic attributes of subpopulations (e.g., racial/ethnic groups, immigrants, etc.).

Our analysis focuses on Latino immigrants and Mexican immigrants (the largest segment of Latino immigrants). Latino immigrants consist of persons born outside of the United States (excluding those born abroad to U.S. citizens as well as those born in U.S. territories) who reported that they were of Latino or Hispanic origin. From this segment, Mexicans include those who indicated that they were of Mexican origin.

The analysis presented below is conducted using basic descriptive statistical techniques. In particular, we present overall summary statistics of the demographic and socioeconomic dimensions on which we focus for 1980, 1990, and 2000. These dimensions include the relative presence of immigrants in the Latino and Mexican populations; geographic distribution; age/sex composition; language use; educational attainment; and poverty.

Results

The results of our analysis provide broad information about important changes that took place amongst Latino and Mexican immigrants over the last three decades. This information will help our understanding of these groups of immigrants, especially since much of the extant work on Latino and Mexican immigrants has tended to focus on the latest data available with relatively little comparison data.

The relative size of immigrants

The volume of Latino immigration has been increasing for decades, particularly over the last several decades. As such, the overall population of Latinos now living in the U.S. is increasingly foreign-born. For example, the foreign-born comprised two-fifths of all Latinos in 2000, up from less than three-tenths in 1980 (Figure 1). The rising presence of immigrants is somewhat more impressive in the case of Mexicans, the group with the longest history in the United States. The foreign-born increased its portion of the overall Mexican population in the country from one-fourth in 1980 to two-fifths in 2000. Nonetheless, the majority —about three-fifths— of Latinos and Mexicans were born in the United States.