The spread of poverty across the United States beginning with the recent recession hit Latino children particularly hard, a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center says. Its analysis of 2010 U.S. Census data concludes that 6.1 young Hispanics are living in poverty–more than any other racial or ethnic group.
The report says the increase in childhood poverty is a product of Hispanics’ growing numbers, high birth rates and declining economic fortunes. Hispanics comprise 16.3% of the total U.S. population, according to the 2010 Census, but 23.1% of the nation’s children. And household wealth declined more sharply among Latinos than among whites or blacks between 2005 and 2009.
More than two-thirds of the Latino children living in poverty are the children of immigrant parents, although the overwhelming majority were themselves born in the U.S.
