A report released by the Pew Hispanic Center has revealed several interesting aspects on Latinos in the U.S.According to the report, a majority of Latino children (52%) in 2007 were second-generation Americans; that is, they were born in the U.S. to at least one foreign parent. The study also observed that almost 40% of Latino children are third-generation and it’s projected that nearly one in three children in the United States will be Latino by 2025.
The study shows a generational shift in the U.S. Latino population; in 1980, roughly one in ten kids were Latinos and most of them were third-generation (i.e. children born in the U.S. to parents also born there).
What does this all mean? The future Latino populace will be more Americanized and possibly (dare I say) assimilated:
“More and more kids are going to have U.S.-born and U.S.-educated parents,” said Richard Fry, senior research associate at the Pew center, who wrote the Pew study with Mr. Passel. “They’re going to be more American, which means they’re going to be more familiar with American institutions, and that has positive consequences and some negative consequences.”Image- AFP
Dr. Fry said that while Asian students generally had higher graduation rates and scored better on achievement tests than Hispanic students, Asian and Hispanic youngsters learned English at about the same pace. Forty-three percent of foreign-born Hispanic children, 21 percent of the second generation and only 5 percent in the third generation or higher said they were not fluent in English.
But the decline in the poverty rate is less steep, the study found. At 47 percent for first-generation Latino children, the rate falls to 26 percent in the second generation, but then drops to only 24 percent in the third.
Online Sources- AFP, New York Times, UPI, Washington Post
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