- Author: Forbes.com by Ted Knutson
Latinos are facing a deeper retirement crisis than other ethnic groups because of lower access to workplace savings plans and other job-related disadvantages in accumulating nest eggs, reports the National Institute on Retirement Security and UnidosUS in a new study.
“Retirement plan participation rate for Latino workers (30.9 percent) is about 22.1 percentage points lower than participation rate of White workers (53% percent), because Latinos face higher access and eligibility hurdles,” the researchers from NIRS and UnidosUS find. Unidos was formerly known as the National Council of La Raza.
In 2014, 53.7 percent of Latinos 21 to 65 who worked for an employer that sponsored a retirement plan compared to 69.8 percent of all workers.
Even when they are working for an employer with a workplace retirement savings plan, Latinos are hurt because they frequently don't meet the eligibility requirements.
Among Latinos with access to a retirement plan, only 60.3 percent satisfy the eligibility requirements versus 72.9 percent for all workers with access.
At the same time, Latino employees who are in workplace retirement plans have about one-third less savings on average than their White workers.
The study warns Latino women are particularly hard hit economically when they reach age 65.
“Without income from work, Latinas age 65 and older would not be able to afford basic expenses. Older Latinas also face poverty rates three times higher than older White women,” the study says.
Smaller than national average incomes also harm Latinos in preparing for their post-workforce future.
“Workers earning low wages and struggling to make ends meet may very well find it difficult to set aside a portion of their income to save for retirement,” the report warns.
The study points out Latinos typically get a late start in saving for retirement.
The majority of Latinos who have access to a workplace retirement plan don't achieve the benefit until age 45.
By 2060, the number of Latinos 65 and over in the U.S. is expected to reach 21.5 million.
Currently, at 57.5 people, Latinos make up 17.8 percent of the nation's population.
Source: Published originally on forbes.com, Latinos Facing Deeper Retirement Security Crisis Than Other Ethnic Groups, by Ted Knutson, December 3rd, 2018.
About 15 million Hispanics lived in California on July 1, 2014, compared to roughly 14.9 million non-Hispanic whites, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released late last week. The California Department of Finance predicted in 2013 that Hispanics would outnumber whites in 2014; the census figures confirm that prediction.
The new data represents a historic shift over a short period of time. California has six times as many Hispanics today as it did in 1970. The number of non-Hispanic whites in the state has declined since 1970.
California Hispanics today enjoy more influence than ever before. They run tens of thousands of California businesses; they support scores of Spanish-language newspapers, radio and TV stations; they make up a sizable proportion of nearly every county in the state, and they hold political positions ranging from mayor of Long Beach to president pro tem of the state Senate.
“It's a milestone for California,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. “In many respects, California's large population growth has been driven by Hispanic population growth.”
Two factors largely explain the growth in California's Latino population: immigration and high birth rates.
From the 1970s through the 1990s, millions of Mexicans, Guatemalans and other Latinos crossed the border into California, some legally, some not. That immigration has lately slowed, particularly during the last recession, several demographers said.
For the past decade or so, most of the population increase among California Hispanics has come from a high number of births and a low number of deaths, several experts said. Latinos tend to be significantly younger than their neighbors; they are of an age where they are likely to have children.
“What's mostly going is the difference in birth rates in Latinos and non-Hispanic whites,” said Laura Hill, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Conversely, the birth rate among whites is relatively low as the population ages and young, non-Hispanic whites put off having children, Hill and others said.
“Along with this, we see people who have left,” said Robert Suro, a professor at the University of Southern California and director of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, a research center that studies demographic diversity. “Somebody who doesn't want to live in an intensely multicultural area has left coastal California by now. Most of them were non-Hispanic whites. Most of them were older adults.”
Latinos in California are largely concentrated in rural farming counties or urban Southern California. About 21 percent of the Sacramento region's residents identify as Latino.
The large majority of Latinos in California are here legally and are working, federal statistics show. Legal immigrants make up more than 80 percent of the state's Latino population, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. More than 90 percent of Latinos in the California labor force hold a job, according to the state Employment Development Department.
“It's a mistake to think California Latinos are just a bunch of undocumented people,” said Jim Gonzalez, chairman of Sacramento's Cien Amigos, a civic action group dedicated to improving California-Mexico relations. “The Latino community is a young, dynamic community. They're excellent consumers, constantly providing for their families, so in pure economic terms alone, this is positive news.”
Even so, many Latinos continue to face barriers. Total Latino household income in California was roughly one-third of household income for non-Hispanic whites in 2013, census figures show. Activists continue to work at increasing voter turnout and social mobility among Hispanics.
When it comes to politics in California, “Latinos punch under their weight,” Suro said.
That could change. Due to population growth alone, California Latinos will make up an estimated 33 percent of voters in the 2040 presidential election, compared with about 24 percent in 2012, said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change.
“If they increase their turnout rates more, coupled with the increase in population, you are going to see even larger increases in their political influence,” Romero said.
Latinos and other ethnic groups have also made California increasingly attractive to those seeking to live in a diverse community, Suro said. Their growing presence helps the state's economy, he added.
“The population change has a magnet to a certain type of person,” he said. It attracts “people looking for a quickly changing ... new-economy ... multicultural-type place.”
Source: Originally published on the Sacramento Bee as Census: Hispanics overtake whites to become California's largest ethnic group, by Phillip Reese and Stephen Magagnini, June 30, 2015.
Child Trends, the non-partisan, non-profit research organization, analyzed a wealth of recent Census data regarding the country's 17.5 million Hispanic children and teens, and the group identified some surprising facts.
The vast majority of Hispanic children in 2013 – more than 90 percent — were born in the U.S. Most of those children had family connections to Mexico, and the rest were connected to Puerto Rico, followed by El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and other countries in Central America, and South America.
A majority of Hispanic children — 58 percent — live with two married parents. Latino children are more likely than their white or black counterparts to eat a meal with their families six or seven days in a week. And those meals are more likely to be home-cooked in Hispanic households, compared to meals eaten in black and white households, according to the report.
Sixty-two percent of Hispanic children are considered low income, living in families that earn just enough money to cover basic needs, the report said. Roughly one out of every three Hispanic children meets the federal definition of poor, compared with 38 percent of black children and 11 percent of white children, researchers at Child Trends found.
Hispanic parents are less likely to read to their babies and toddler than parents of white children, and Hispanic children are not adequately prepared when they start school, the report found. But there has been a recent jump in enrollment in early childhood education programs among Hispanic children, from 39 percent in 2007 to 52 percent in 2012.
And, as a group, Hispanic students are making gains, though they lag behind their white peers. Twenty-one percent of Hispanic eighth graders were proficient in federally administered math tests in 2013, a leap from eight percent in 2000. The on-time high school graduation rate for Hispanics also has surged, and college enrollment is at an all-time high. But Hispanics lagged behind whites and blacks in college completion in 2013.
One area where Hispanics outpaced other racial or ethnic groups is in smartphone use. In 2012, 43 percent of Hispanic teens between 12 and 17 owned a smartphone, compared to 35 percent of whites and 40 percent of blacks in the same age group. More white teenagers owned cell phones, followed by black teens and then Hispanics.
Source: Published originally on The Washington Post as New report reveals surprising facts about Hispanic children and teens by Lyndsey Laytom, September 24, 2014.
- Author: The Wall Street Journal
Latinos account for 28.8% of the 61,120 Californians admitted for this fall's freshman class at the UC system's nine undergraduate campuses, up from 27.6% last year and topping the 26.8% share of whites, preliminary data show.
Both trail the 36.2% share for Asians, the largest freshman group for the past few years. Blacks represented 4.2% of those admitted, the same as in 2013.
Hispanics represent California's largest ethnic group. According to the California Department of Finance, among 15- to 19-year-olds in California, 49.4% are Hispanic, 29.2% are white, 10.9% are Asian and 6% are black.
"The freshmen admitted reflect the changing demographics and diversity of the state," said Dianne Klein, spokeswoman for the UC system.
Los Angeles resident Wessly Hernandez, 17, who plans to study civil engineering, was admitted to UC San Diego, Davis and Irvine, as well as the University of Southern California and Carnegie Mellon University. "My parents didn't make it to high school so I feel a lot of satisfaction, because this accomplishment is for them as well as for me," said the son of a cleaning lady and mechanic, both Latino.
California law prohibits public universities from considering race or ethnicity in admissions decisions. But Ms. Klein said the UC system has been striving to attract students from underperforming high schools, which typically have a concentration of under-represented minority and low-income students.
About 43% of those admitted for the fall identified themselves as the first to attend college in their families. "Too often in minority communities there was this perception of the vaunted University of California system as too expensive and out of reach," she said.
"It's great that Latinos are being more represented in the UC system, since, after all, they are largest group in California," said Dowell Myers, a California demographer at USC, a private institution. "It would be really useful to have more representation of African- Americans."
Meantime, the UC system, like many others, attracted more nonresidents to help bolster its budget. The share of students the UC system admitted from other states climbed 9% from last year, while the number from other countries rose 15%, according to university figures.
The system, which includes the prestigious Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles campuses, estimates 13% of undergraduates this coming academic year will be non-Californians, up from 12% this year and about 5% four years ago. Tuition for nonresidents is about $35,000 compared with $13,000 for residents. "The revenue they bring is substantial and subsidizes the education of Californians," Ms. Klein said.
Some other big state universities have even greater out-of-state populations, including the University of Michigan, University of Alabama and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Source: Published originally on The Wall Street Journal as Hispanics Gain at California Colleges by Miriam Jordan, April 20, 2014.
- Author: Dr. Carlos Cortés, University of California, Riverside
Let’s begin by comparing Hispanic with four other common ethnic umbrella terms: European-American, Asian-American, African-American and Native-American. Certainly they all share the characteristics of having a geographical reference point. But beyond that, distinctions appear.
European-American is probably the least complicated term. It refers to Americans whose ancestry derives primarily from Europe. Yet European-Americans spring from nations with vastly different languages and cultures.
Similarly, Asian-American refers to Americans whose ancestry derives from Asia. They, too, spring from myriad languages and cultures. Yet there is disagreement over where to draw the line between Asian Americans and Middle Eastern Americans or whether they should all be placed within one convenient cohort.
Like the previous umbrella terms, African-American refers to Americans whose ancestry derives from a continent, in this case Africa. In U.S. popular parlance, however, African-American does not refer to all people of continental African ancestry, but rather only to those categorized racially in the United States as Black Americans.
Native-American refers to Americans whose ancestry derives from the hundreds of Indian cultures, with a myriad of languages, currently situated within the current boundaries of the United States. However, as commonly used, Native-American does not generally include those of Latin American indigenous origins.
So what about Hispanics? Unlike European-Americans and Asian-Americans, Hispanics generally share a common ancestral language — Spanish. Unlike African Americans, Hispanics do not all come from one racial origin (race as used popularly in the United States, not as a scientific term). Like Native Americans, many Hispanics have familial roots in this land before it became part of the current United States. However, unlike most Native Americans, tens of millions of Hispanics have immigrant roots.
In short, Hispanic is a unique umbrella concept. It is unique because it embraces both those with immigrant roots and those whose ancestors were here before the United States came to them. It is also unique because, unlike the other umbrella terms, it refers to a multiracial people with a common ancestral language and, in some respects, widely-shared cultural characteristics. It is that uniqueness that I will further explore in my next blog.
Source: Published originally on Univision Hispanic Insights Blog as “Ethnic Umbrellas” by Dr. Carlos Cortés, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside, February 23, 2013.