Report Materials
Complete ReportInteractive Mapping FeatureCounty Data and Other ResourcesSince 2000 Hispanics have accounted for more than half (50.5%) of the overall population growth in the United States -- a significant new demographic milestone for the nation's largest minority group. During the 1990s, the Hispanic population also expanded rapidly, but in that decade its growth accounted for less than 40% of the nation's total population increase. In a reversal of past trends, Latino population growth in the new century has been more a product of the natural increase (births minus deaths) of the existing population than it has been of new international migration. As of mid-2007, Hispanics accounted for 15.1% of the total U.S. population.
Since 2000 many Latinos have settled in counties that once had few Latinos, continuing a pattern that began in the previous decade. But there are subtle differences in Hispanic settlement patterns in the current decade compared with those of the 1990s. The dispersion of Latinos in the new century has tilted more to counties in the West and the Northeast. Despite the new tilt, however, the South accounted for a greater share of overall Latino population growth than any other region in the new century. There is also an ever-growing concentration of Hispanic population growth in metropolitan areas. These findings emerge from the Pew Hispanic Center's analysis of the Census Bureau's 2007 county population estimates, supplemented by 1990 and 2000 county population counts from the Decennial Censuses.
Where Latinos Live
County Data and Other Resources
Data on All 3,141 U.S. Counties (Download Excel file)
Passel, Jeffrey S. and D'Vera Cohn. 2008.
U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050. Washington, DC: The Pew Hispanic Center.
Frey, William H. 2006.
Diversity Spreads Out: Metropolitan Shifts in Hispanic, Asian, and Black Populations Since 2000. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Fischer, Mary J. and Marta Tienda. 2006. "Redrawing Spatial Color Lines: Hispanic Metropolitan Dispersal, Segregation, and Economic Opportunity," in Hispanics and the Future of America, edited by Marta Tienda and Faith Mitchell. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Johnson, Kenneth M. and Daniel T. Lichter. 2008. "Natural Increase: A New Source of Population Growth in Emerging Hispanic Destinations in the United States," Population and Development Review, vol. 34, no. 2, June.
Kandel, William and John Cromartie. 2004.
New Patterns of Hispanic Settlement in Rural America. Washington, DC: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Guzman, Betsy and Eileen Diaz McConnell. 2001.
The Hispanic Population: 1990-2000 Growth and Change. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
Kochhar, Rakesh, Roberto Suro and Sonya Tafoya. 2005.
The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth. Washington, DC: The Pew Hispanic Center.
More on Demography
U.S. Population Projections: 2005-20502007 National Survey of Latinos: As Illegal Immigration Issue Heats Up, Hispanics Feel a ChillHispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote?Hispanic Women in the United States, 2007Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2006
