U.S. Latino families – including its children – are much poorer now
Latino kids now have the highest rate of living in poverty in the country. (Photo courtesy of Latino Policy Forum/Olga Lopez)
CHICAGO – Think the recession has been rough on your wallet? Consider this: Latino families, an ever growing part of the Midwest, saw a 66 percent decrease in wealth between 2005 and 2009, losing $2 for every $3 saved during that time.
That’s the first of many sobering statistics about Latino families that were presented by my public broadcasting colleague Ray Suarez of PBS NewsHour this morning at a Latino Policy Forum breakfast. Suarez said that Latino familes’ average wealth went from $18,359 in 2005 to just $6,325 in 2009.
Economic Policy Institute Chart on the correlation between housing starts and remittances to Mexico, 2008 (EPI)
Why? Suarez spoke about the “tumbling dominoes” of the heavy concentration of Latinos who work in construction, as well as families’ disproportionately high exposure to sub prime loans and diminishing home equity.
(The Economic Policy Institute wrote a few years ago about the tie between Mexican workers in construction and how housing start data can be correlated with the actual amount of money being sent back to Mexico.)
Those factors have helped contribute to the vast drop in wealth, and it also means that Latino kids now have the highest rate of poverty in the nation.
Suarez noted this was the first time in U.S. history that there were more Latino children living below the poverty line than their white counterparts. Overall, Latinos now make up 16 percent of the US population, 23 percent of nation’s children, and more than 30 percent of its poor children.
Why should you care? The 2010 census, which Changing Gears looked at last spring, showed us how fast the Latino population was growing as the country’s largest ethnic minority.
“This community is now too big for American to try to succeed without it,” said Suarez. “Our future prosperity is this country’s prosperity. If we don’t make it, it won’t just be us that’s worse off for it – everybody will be worse off for it.”
As Suarez pointed out: these children are the tomorrow’s wage earners, and not just in the workforce – they’ll be responsible, as he said, for paying his Social Security check.
(Interested in more? Check out my stories and posts about Latinos across the Midwest.)
Update: The Latino Policy Forum has posted the video of the speech: