The most contempo tally of the nation's Hispanic population startled even demographers: According to the 2010 Census, Hispanics in the U.S. at present number 50.5 million, or one out of every six Americans. From 2000 to 2010, more than half of the nation'due south population growth was due to Hispanics. In every single state in the union, the percentage of Hispanics increased.

The burgeoning Hispanic population creates both challenges and opportunities for the time to come, say social demographers and Wharton economists. Brusk term, Hispanics may stimulate business organisation, pump up weak housing markets, replenish an crumbling labor force and revitalize dying communities. But equally Hispanic babies blast and America'due south not-Hispanic white population shrinks, an indigenous generation gap looms. Longer term, experts say, the country must observe a way to educate an increasingly various and underprivileged generation of children or risk losing its competitive edge.

"The future of the Usa is increasingly tied to its minority populations," says Steve Murdock, a former director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census and a sociology professor at Rice University in Houston. For example, in Texas, home to more Hispanics than whatsoever other state except California, 95% of the child population growth over the past decade has been Hispanic. And as the number of Hispanic students increased, the number of disadvantaged students also increased, Murdock says. For the offset fourth dimension in history, more than half of all children in Texas public schools are at present Hispanic.

"We have to modify the educational futures for these kids. Non just for them, bluntly, but for all of our do good," Murdock says. "The bottom line is this: If we practise not provide the resources, if we do not invest in these populations at these young ages … we could exist poorer and less competitive than we are today. If we do invest, we could be at an advantage."

The challenges are non unique to Texas. While the bulk of the nation'south Hispanics remain concentrated in nine states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York and Texas — the residuum are dispersed more widely than ever earlier, says Marking Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C. Some of the virtually rapid growth of the Hispanic population has occurred in the South, where industrial expansion and a housing boom drew immigrants looking for work. States such as Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas and Georgia "saw the population of Hispanics double or almost double in the past decade," Lopez notes. "Georgia now has the 10th largest Hispanic population in the country."

The changes practice not come up from immigration alone. "Different the previous two decades, this terminal decade was one in which more of the growth came from native births than came from immigration," Lopez says. American-built-in Hispanics accounted for 70% of the increment in the Hispanic population between 2000 and 2009, according to a Pew Hispanic Heart assay.

No Longer Immigrants

The rapid growth of the Hispanic customs is both a blessing and a curse for business, which sees a growing Hispanic market place but finds it becoming then big and diverse that it is hard to pin downwardly. Hispanics take their roots in more than twenty different countries and take vastly different ways of eating, speaking and celebrating their heritage. Hispanic groups likewise vary widely in terms of age, income, pedagogy level and habitation ownership.

The traditional approach to the Hispanic market "has been diddled upwardly" by the new Demography information, says Jose Villa, president of Sensis, a multicultural advertizement agency in Los Angeles. For the by xxx years, American businesses accept marketed to Hispanics as a carve up group — a Spanish-speaking minority. Only today, the bulk of Hispanics are native-born Americans who speak English language and practice not rely exclusively on Spanish-language media. "The big headline should be: 'Hispanics are not immigrants anymore,'" Villa says. The conundrum: how to marketplace to the growing numbers of Latinos who accept pride in their heritage but don't speak Spanish. "Are they mainstream at present?" asks Villa. "Exercise we have to expect at them equally a different group or not?"

Villa predicts that Hispanic-focused advert agencies will dwindle every bit companies begin to encounter Hispanics as part of the general market, rather than a segment requiring carve up advert. Final twelvemonth, brands such as Home Depot, Florida supermarket chain Publix and Burger King consolidated their Latino-targeted advertising efforts, dropping their Hispanic ad agencies and shifting the work to full general market firms. Villa has also noticed more English-language advertising directed at the Hispanic population. For instance, a Bud Light commercial featuring Carlos Mencia that was initially commissioned for the Hispanic market was constitute to have enough full general appeal that information technology was circulate during the Super Bowl. "What they're saying is, the primary audition for Bud Light is really becoming Hispanic," Villa says.

The growth of the Hispanic population over the by decade has been skilful for the economy, especially in parts of the country that have lost population, according to Wharton real estate professor Fernando Ferreira. "It means more people, more demand for housing; it means growth," he says, noting that if Hispanics move into de-populated areas, they could drive habitation prices up by increasing the demand for housing. Unlike some European countries that are losing population, America is belongings steady considering of growth in the Hispanic community. "It's a major plus for the United States, a buffer against major recessions in the existent estate market."

A growing Hispanic population as well helps programs such as social security, says Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the touch of fertility on the social security system. "In that location are 3 ways that populations tin can alter: birth, decease and migration," he notes. In the United States, the Hispanic population is growing as a result of all three. Migration has slowed considerably since the recession, simply withal factors into Hispanics' increasing numbers. Unknown to most people, Hispanics in the United States also take a longer life expectancy than not-Hispanics, living on average ii years longer than other groups. And the Hispanic population in the U.S. has a high fertility rate, averaging ii.5 births per woman compared to about 1.9 for not-Hispanics. This has contributed to an increase in America'due south overall fertility, which rose from an average of well-nigh 1.8 children per woman in the 1980s to 2.1 children per woman before the recession, according to Preston. U.S. fertility is high compared to Europe, which averages about i.half dozen children per woman.

High fertility rates of Hispanics are "a major advantage for the actuarial balance of the social security system," Preston explains. Effectually the world, countries are struggling to maintain government run retirement programs as fertility rates drop and leave countries without enough young workers to back up aging retirees. Births play a bigger part than migration in terms of tipping the scales, he points out, because migrant workers unremarkably start contributing to the social security arrangement role way through their working life, but stay in the country for a full retirement. Babies, on the other hand, abound up and piece of work a total life before tapping into the system. "It'southward the high fertility that's really an advantage," he says.

A Generation Gap?

The growing Hispanic population besides poses considerable challenges for the land's futurity, even so. Economical and social disparities are becoming more astute as the Hispanic population expands relatively faster than the rest of the country. Final year, virtually half (48.6%) of all births in the United States were minorities, notes Kenneth Johnson, a demographer and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. By contrast, minorities business relationship for only about 20% of people over 65. The result is an ethnic and generational divide that could have serious policy implications in the time to come.

"Information technology'south actually a two-pronged issue," says Johnson. The U.Southward. is witnessing "a growing minority population at the same fourth dimension that the not-Hispanic white population is diminishing." Johnson asks: Will an aging non-Hispanic white population respond to the needs of a younger generation that is so culturally and ethnically unlike from its ain? At that place is "a pretty complicated relationship between an older non-Hispanic white population and a young minority population," Johnson says. "Ane big business for the future is whether the country is willing to brand the delivery to educate this population the mode information technology educated the populations in past."

Based on ages and fertility rates, the nation'south diverseness is likely to keep accelerating. Whites are crumbling more rapidly than other groups, says William H. Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The median age of the Hispanic population is 27 compared with 41 for whites — meaning fewer white women are in their childbearing years. Betwixt 2000 and 2010, the population of white children declined by 4.three million, while Hispanics added 4.8 meg children to their households. Today, one-third of the Hispanic population is under the age of 18, compared with one-fifth of the non-Hispanic white population.

"The fact that we have a youth population which is very different than even our most recent working age population says a lot near what we need to do to [prepare] our labor force for the future," says Frey. "It's clear that we need to bargain with all kinds of aspects of these people'southward lives. They need to have affordable homes, they need health intendance, they demand a multifariousness of public services….These people are going to be the mainstay of our labor force."

They will also be a larger part of the voting population than ever earlier: According to a written report released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Middle, more than 6.6 million Latinos voted in last year's election — a record for a midterm. "Fueled by their rapid population growth, Latinos also were a larger share of the electorate in 2010 than in any previous midterm election, representing six.9% of all voters, upward from 5.8% in 2006," the written report noted. Pew and others have pointed out that Hispanics tend to vote solidly Democratic.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest challenges going forrad is to make sure that America's Hispanic population does not become socially stratified, says Wharton real estate professor Albert Saiz. His research on the housing market place has shown that when immigrants move into wealthy white neighborhoods, the native population often moves out. Information up to the 2000 Census showed "an increasing segregation of Hispanics," Saiz says. "It wasn't a good trend."

He is non sure how much that trend has connected, since the detailed housing information from the 2010 Census has yet to come up out. But he echoes others who say that educational activity is primal to eliminating disparities. "One of the biggest challenges is to brand certain that Hispanics here generate a potent middle class, or, fifty-fifty better, a potent higher-educated group," says Saiz. "That's what's going to brand or suspension the community."

"Latin American countries are already very stratified," Saiz adds. "We don't want these patterns of social stratification to replicate here."