Hispanics are three times more likely to live in poverty than non-Hispanic whites, says a government study that details their difficulty climbing the economic ladder.
Twenty-nine percent of the nation's 22.1 million residents of Hispanic origin live below the poverty line, the Census Bureau said in a report issued Monday. But only 9 percent of the population that statisticians refer to as "non-Hispanic whites" live in poverty.Hispanics are disproportionately represented among the nation's poor, accounting for 18 percent of all citizens living in poverty despite constituting only 9 percent of the country's total population. The U.S. government considers a family of four under the poverty level if its annual income is $14,350 or less.
The Hispanic share of the nation's total income also is disproportionately small - only 5 percent of the country's pay. The study found that of the United States' $3.6 trillion in before-tax earnings in 1991, Hispanics accounted for $184 billion.
This is the first time the annual census report, based this year mostly on March 1992 data, compares the lifestyle characteristics of Hispanics with those of non-Hispanic whites.
"As we become interested in learning about how the Hispanic-origin population differs from other Americans, presenting contrasts with (the) non-Hispanic white population shows the differences more clearly," said Jorge del Pinal, one of the study's authors.
The census study mirrors some findings in a report issued last month by the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest community-based Hispanic organ-i-za-tion.
The La Raza study concluded that lack of education has forced more Hispanics than ever into lower-skilled jobs. It also found that as lucrative manufacturing positions disappeared in the past decade, Hispanics moved in greater numbers to low-paying service jobs that provide few or no benefits.