Diversity is our Strength?? Hispanics: A Statistical Portrait

Also See: Diversity is Our Strength?

California's population is only 37% White (non-hispanic), 14.5% Asian, but 49% Hispanic/Latino/Black. This helps explain the following:

• Poverty in California is the highest in the nation at 15.4% (after all government support is considered).   

• Another 10.3% of California population would be "impoverished"  or about 25% without government transfers. This is the highest in the nation.
  

• California also has the lowest literacy rate in the nation at ~75%, meaning ~25% of the population is illiterate. For comparison, New Hampshire has a 95% literacy rate with very few minorities.
  

• California has the 2nd highest tax rates when adding State and Local taxes at 13.5% after New York state at 15.9%.
  

Income and Wealth

• Per capita income of Hispanics is one half that of non-Hispanic whites, and household net worth is less than one tenth.

• Fifty percent of Hispanic households use some form of welfare, the highest rate of any major population group.

Crime

• Hispanics are 3.3 times more likely to be in prison than whites; they are 4.2 times more likely to be in prison for murder, and 5.8 times more likely to be in prison for felony drug crimes.

• Young Hispanics are 19 times more likely than young whites (and slightly more likely than young blacks) to be in youth gangs.

Education

• Hispanics drop out of high school at three times the white rate and twice the black rate.

• Even third-generation Hispanics drop out of school at a higher rate than blacks and are less likely to be college graduates.

• From 1992 to 2003, Hispanic illiteracy in English rose from 35 percent to 44 percent.

• The average Hispanic 12th-grader reads and does math at the level of the average white 8th-grader.

Families and Health

• At 43 percent, the Hispanic illegitimacy rate is twice the white rate, and Hispanic women have abortions at 2.7 times the white rate.

• Hispanics are three times more likely than whites not to have medical insurance, and die from AIDS and tuberculosis at three times the white rate.

• In California, the cost of free medical care for illegal aliens forced 60 hospitals to close between 1993 and 2003.

Attitudes

• Only 33 percent of citizens of Hispanic origin consider themselves “Americans” first. The rest consider themselves either “Hispanic/Latino” or their former nationality first.