For a brief moment last month—roughly a 72-hour span
beginning at 11:00 p.m. on November 6 and concluding late in the evening of
November 9—everyone in America was interested in demographics. That’s
because, in addition to rewarding the just, punishing the wicked, and
certifying that America was (for the moment) not racist, President Barack
Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney pointed to two ineluctable demographic truths.
The first was expected: that the growth of the Hispanic-American cohort is
irresistible and will radically transform our country’s ethnic future. The
second caught people by surprise: that the proportion of unmarried Americans
was suddenly at an all-time high.
Unfortunately, by the time the window closed on the
public’s demographic curiosity no one really understood either of these shifts.
Or where they came from. Or whether they were even particularly true. As is
often the case, people tended to fixate on a relatively small, contingent part
of America’s changing demographic makeup and look past the bigger, more
consequential part of the story.
So let’s begin by asking the obvious question:
Hispanics are America’s demographic future—true or false? The answer is,
both. Sort of.
Start with what we know. As of the 2010 census, there
were 308.7 million people in America, 50.5 million of whom (16 percent) were
classified as being of “Hispanic origin.” Of that 50 million, about half are
foreign-born legal immigrants. Another 11 million or so are illegal immigrants.
A few other facts, just to give you some texture: 63 percent of American
Hispanics trace their origins to Mexico, 9.2 percent to Puerto Rico, and 3.5
percent to Cuba. And more than half of the 50 million live in just three
states, California, Texas, and Florida.
