Posts Tagged: demographic
Latino Spending Power Reaches All-Time High, Surpasses Non-Latino Groups'
Recent studies prove that spending power by the Hispanic demographic is growing faster than that of non-Latino groups.
The number of Hispanic households is growing faster than ever, making a larger consumer group. This also means that there is a higher spending power among Latinos in America that businesses will model some of their strategies toward.
Between 2012 and 2015, Latino households represented about 40 percent of the growth in spending for household equipment. In the same time period, Hispanic households accounted for 25 percent of the growth in spending for new cars and trucks.
Data for Latino Household Aggregated Spending
Latino household accounted for double-digit shares of growth in aggregated expenditures:
- 20 percent growth in furniture expenses
- 18 percent growth in major household appliances
- 17 percent growth in audio-visual equipment and services
- 16 percent growth in small appliances
Data for Latino Household Use of Financial Services
In the past 10 years, Latino households have accounted for the rapid growth of a wide selection of financial services. Hispanic households have spent more on financial services than any other demographic in the U.S.
Hispanic Contribution to Growth in Financial Industry
Between 2005 and 2015, the use of credit cards by Latinos have grown 11 times faster than it did in non-Latino households. Data shows that it grew by 44 percent, whereas other households only grew by 4 percent.
In the same time period, there were 5.1 million more Latino credit card holders which accounted for about 49 percent of the growth in the total amount of consumers using credit cards.
Hispanic Consumer Trends Impact Foodservice Industry
Not only are Hispanic consumers contributing to the growth of the financial industry, the demographic also makes a huge impact on the foodservice industry.
A recent Hispanic Foodservice Consumer Trend Report says that Latinos are expected to make up nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population. What that means is that, the Latino demographic will shape the growth of the industry because as the population grows, so will its usage of food.
Forty-one percent of Hispanic consumers account for the usage of foodservices twice a week.
Family style eating places benefit the most from Latino consumers since Hispanics generally like to eat meals with their families.
Franchises will benefit from the growth in Latino spending power should they add popular Hispanic meals and flavors to their menus.
Source: Published originally on LatinPost.com Latino Spending Power Reaches All-Time High, Surpasses Non-Latino Groups' , by Claudia Balthazar, August 12, 2016.
Scientists unlock a secret to Latinos' longevity, with hopes of slowing aging for everyone
The findings offer some insight into a long-standing demographic mystery: Despite having higher rates of inflammation and such chronic diseases as obesity and diabetes, Latinos in the United States have a longer average lifespan than do non-Latino whites.
The research also helps answer questions about why some people die young while others live to old age, and what chronic diseases have to do with aging.
To get a handle on some of these thorny issues, UCLA bioinformatician Steve Horvath and his colleagues have been trying to devise a biological clock that measures age more comprehensively than simply counting up birthdays. Their method reflects the activity level of the epigenome, the set of signals that prompt one's genes to change their function across a lifespan in response to new demands.
This “epigenetic clock” captures a key feature of aging: that as we grow older, there are complex but predictable changes in the rate at which our genes are switched on and off.
Earlier efforts to devise an epigenetic clock suggested that biological age, and the speed of aging, not only differ among populations and from person to person. They also can vary for a single individual, with some body parts aging faster or slower than others. That may help explain why some organs and tissues are more vulnerable to such age-related diseases as cancer.
In the new study, published this month in the journal Genome Biology, Horvath's team set out to refine and test that clock.
The researchers analyzed blood, saliva and lymphoblastoid samples collected from more than 5,000 people who had participated in a wide range of studies. Those participants included not only black, white and Latino Americans but also Han Chinese, members of the Tsimane Amerindian tribe in South America, a group of hunter-gatherers from a central African rainforest, and another group of African agrarians living in grasslands and open savannas.
To arrive at a single measure of a person's biological age and then compute his or her speed of aging, the researchers measured epigenetic activity at 353 sites in the genome.
The Tsimane, an indigenous people who forage and cultivate crops in the lowlands of Bolivia, offered an especially good test of the epigenetic clock. Since they're constantly bombarded with bacterial, viral and parasitic infections, they typically experience high rates of inflammation, which has widely been seen as a marker for aging. But they rarely show risk factors for heart disease or develop Type 2 diabetes as they get older. In addition, obesity, high blood pressure and problematic cholesterol are virtually nonexistent.
The team's epigenetic clock revealed that the Tsimane aged quite slowly, even compared with Latino Americans. According to the analysis, Tsimane blood looked as if it was two years younger than the blood of Latino Americans and four years younger than the blood of white Americans.
That gap was particularly striking in light of strong evidence that, over the age of 35, a Tsimane's immune system was close to exhausted and his inflammation levels “make him look like a 90-year-old,” Horvath said.
“This result sheds light on what is frequently called the Hispanic paradox,” he said. “It suggests that what gives Hispanics their advantage is really their Native American ancestry, because they share ancestry with these indigenous Americans.”
Horvath emphasized that Latinos' slower aging rate cannot be explained by lifestyle factors such as diet, socioeconomic status, education or obesity, because researchers adjusted for the influence of such factors.
The study may also shed light on a different demographic oddity: that once African Americans have reached the age of 85, they tend to live longer than whites of the same age. Using the new gauge of biological aging, the researchers found that older African Americans indeed age more slowly than do whites of the same chronological age.
The measure also found that women age more slowly than men, and that aging accelerates in people with less education and slows with higher educational attainment. These results bolster long-standing observations that women live longer than men (despite suffering more illnesses) and that more education is linked to longevity.
The study results offer some validation of the epigenetic clock because they track nicely with a host of baffling demographic patterns.
Several other studies have begun to validate the clock's accuracy and reliability, testing it in populations known to age differently from the norm, including people with Down syndrome, HIV infection and Parkinson's disease. In three studies, the clock has been found to accurately predict mortality from any cause in large populations, even after researchers adjusted for chronological age and a range of factors that can erode health and hasten death.
“This effort is very novel and exciting,” said Max Guo, chief of the division of aging biology at the National Institute on Aging, which has funded Horvath's research.
Guo said that ultimately, biological clocks that use large panels of markers — not just epigenetics but other measures of well-being — would probably be needed to capture the complexity of aging. “But this is promising,” he said.
Source: Published originally on latimes.com. Scientists unlock a secret to Latinos' longevity, with hopes of slowing aging for everyone, by Melissa Healy, August 19, 2016.
Fox News Latino poll: 79% of Latinos prefer to get their news in English
The theory has always been that the best way to tap into the fast-growing segment of the population, with its $1.3 trillion spending power and increasing political influence, was to do so in its native language.
But a new poll by Fox News Latino turns that theory on its head.
When asked in what language they prefer to get their news, 79 percent of registered Latino voters said they preferred their news in English.
“I'm not incredibly surprised. It reflects a demographic shift as second-, third- and even fourth-generation Latinos, who identify with their culture, but English is their dominant language,” Jessica J. Gonzalez, executive vice president and general counsel of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, told Fox News Latino.
The poll surveyed 803 registered Latino voters nationwide between Aug. 7 and 10. The poll, which has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, was conducted under the direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R).
“This is why our agency has been focused on infusing more people of color into Latino media for years. For a long time, there's been an assumption that all Latinos have been watching news in Spanish,” Gonzalez added.
Following the trend, Univision, which began in 1962 as a Spanish-language news channel, launched Univision News this year with news targeting “English-dominant” Latinos.
In 2010, Fox News Latino launched a ground-breaking website appealing to second- and third-generation Hispanics with national news in English. Fox News Latino launched to fill a gap in the media for Latinos looking for news about their community in English.
According to the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of Hispanics speak primarily English or are bilingual.
"When I was growing up, speaking Spanish was something that people didn't do,” Mark Hugo Lopez at the Pew Research Center told Univision. “People were trying to run away from all those things that were Mexican.”
Aly Col?n, John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, said that when you compare Univision with its main Spanish-language rival, Telemundo, you see that Univision is looking more toward an English-oriented audience, which means a younger and more affluent group. In comparison, he said, Spanish-language network Telemundo is looking to reach more recent immigrants from Latin America.
“The news media looks at [their audiences] as one thing, but really it's multiple things. But depending on how they view their audience will determine whether it's in English or Spanish,” Col?n told Fox News Latino.
Gonzalez said she believes the lack of newsroom diversity is the true missed opportunity.
“If you're not serving your audience, they're not going to watch,” Gonzalez said. “At a conference of ours recently, [ABC News correspondent] John Quiñones talked about how he was able to gather news as a Latino that his non-Latino peers could not – because the community was comfortable with him and he was comfortable in the community.”
Source: Published originally on Fox News Latino, Fox News Latino poll: 79% of Latinos prefer to get their news in English, by Rebekah Sager, August 15, 2016
Rise in English proficiency among U.S. Hispanics is driven by the young
When asked about their language use and English proficiency in 2014, some 88% of Latinos ages 5 to 17 said they either speak only English at home or speak English “very well,” up from 73% who said the same in 2000.
And among Latinos ages 18 to 33, the share who speak only English at home or say they speak English “very well” increased from 59% to 76% during this time.
Increasing English use by young Hispanics has been driven in large part by demographics. More Hispanics in the U.S. today were born in the country than arrived as immigrants (the number of newly arrived immigrants from Latin America has been in decline for a decade). For example, 65% of Latinos in 2014 were U.S. born, compared with 60% in 2000. One consequence of this trend is that a greater share of young Hispanics ages 5 to 17 are growing up in households where only English is spoken – 37% in 2014 compared with 30% in 2000.
By comparison, English proficiency among older Latinos has changed little since 2000. For instance, among Latinos ages 34 to 49, 55% spoke English very well or only spoke English at home in 2014 – nearly unchanged from 2000, when the share was 53%. Among Latinos ages 69 and older, just 43% said they spoke English proficiently in 2014, compared with 42% in 2000.
Even as more Latinos speak English proficiently than in the past, many also speak Spanish. The Pew Research Center analysis shows that 36.7 million Latinos speak Spanish at home, making Spanish the most spoken non-English language in the U.S. Looked at another way, three-in-four (73%) Latinos say they speak Spanish at home.
Despite the rise of English among U.S. Latinos, nearly all say they value the ability to speak Spanish, with 95% saying it is important to them that future generations of U.S. Latinos speak the language. Still, as English use rises, most Latinos say Spanish doesn't define their identity: 71% say speaking Spanish is not necessary to be considered Latino.
You can see a statistical portrait of the nation's Hispanic population here that documents key demographic and economic trends from 1980 to 2014.
Source: Published originally on PewResearchCenter, Rise in English proficiency among U.S. Hispanics is driven by the young by Jens Manuel Krogstad, April 20, 2016.
Regions along the nation’s 'three coasts' grow increasingly Hispanic, new survey reveals
To better document such trends, the Brookings Institution has created an interactive map charting demographic changes by age throughout the nation.
Most striking is the increase in Hispanic population - immigrants and children of immigrants.
As of 2013 in the Houston-Woodlands-Sugar Land metro area, 38 percent of the total population was white, 17 percent black and 36 percent Hispanic. But in the 4 and under age group, Anglo population declined to 28 percent; Hispanic grew to 48 percent. Only in the 50-65 age group did Anglos assert plurality of 51 percent, roughly twice the Hispanic population. Black population varied little when broken down by age groups.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area, demographic makeup for all ages in 2013 was 49 percent white, 15 percent black and 28 percent Hispanic. In the 4 and under age group, Hispanics topped Anglos by 40 to 36 percent. In the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area, Hispanics made up 55 percent of the total population; 64 percent of those in the 4 and under age group.
In the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area, 60 percent of those 4 and under were Hispanic; only 19 percent white. Whites retained a plurality only among those 50 and older.
Generally, areas in the upper Midwest were less diverse. In the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area whites retained a plurality in the total population - 48 percent - and in the 4 and under group, with 38 percent white, 32 percent Hispanic.
Source: Published originally on The Houston Chronicle as Regions along the nation's 'three coasts' grow increasingly Hispanic, new survey reveals, by Allan Turner, January 5, 2016.