Hispanic Population Grows 4 Times Faster Than U.S.
Hispanics in the U.S. increased four times faster than the total population during the past decade as residents of Mexican origin more than doubled, the Census Bureau said.
Latino residents jumped by 15.2 million, or 43 percent, and accounted for the majority of the nation’s 9.7 percent growth rate from 2000 to 2010, the federal agency said today. The Hispanic population grew in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and now accounts for 16 percent of U.S. residents.
In 2008, Latinos voted for Barack Obama by a ratio of more than 2-to-1, according to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. The role that Hispanic population growth will play in U.S. politics won’t be fully known until states finish drawing new districts.
“A lot of these places that are gaining Hispanics would be losing population otherwise,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “In the moderate to longer run, this will still be a large source of our growth. Most of the Hispanic growth is due to natural increase, not from immigration.”
Residents of Mexican origin jumped to 31.8 million from 20.6 million in 2000, and more than half of the Hispanic population in the U.S. lived in California, Texas and Florida, census figures show. The Puerto Rican population, the second- largest Hispanic group in the U.S., grew to 4.6 million from 3.4 million.
Residents of Cuban origin increased to 1.8 million from 1.2 million. During the past decade, residents of Salvadoran, Dominican and Guatemalan origin each surpassed a population of 1 million.
The world’s largest economy grew to 308,745,538 residents in 2010, with the biggest gains coming in the South and West. The addition of 27.3 million residents was the weakest pace of population growth in seven decades as the worst recession since the Great Depression stunted immigration, according to the Census Bureau.