Were population groups merely fungible, the current challenges facing America and HispanicLatinos might be less compelling. If HispanicLatino households reflected the socioeconomic characteristics of the Anglo household, their growing numbers would be what the nation needs to help balance its budget and invest in its future. But though HispanicLatinos constitute an important strategic asset in the fiscal future of the country, they are in dire straits. HispanicLatinos earn little more than as 40 years ago. In a land that aspires to political and societal equality, the economic inequality among its individual components has taken on ominous implications.
The average economic growth of most of the HispanicLatino population is stagnant, and in many cases its economic standing is creating barely enough value in whole to be considered significant. Without a successful HispanicLatino population, America will not be able to pay its bills unless something truly remarkable happens that once again gives it a competitive edge that will allow it to create wealth faster or at the same rate as other, emerging nations.
Through the years, the average total household income of HispanicLatinos has remained constantly behind the national average. Since 1972, when some observers began to pay attention to what would become inexorable HispanicLatino population growth, the median HispanicLatino household income in 2009 dollars increased from $35,200 to just $38,039 – an increase of about $2,839, or about $78 a year.
For the same time period, the Anglo household income increased by almost $7,551 from $47,310 to $54,861, or about $204 annually.
Were this merely an issue of income disparity, it would be only a continuation of the story humankind has witnessed throughout time in which the poor persist. But by far more important is that the gap between the two groups in income is growing. The difference in income between the two groups was $12,110 in 1972 and $16,822 in 2009 – while the HispanicLatino population during those 37 years zoomed from an estimated 10 million in 1972 to 52 million today and the Anglo population began its unplanned recession in births, falling under the replacement rate of 2.1. These numbers do not square.
Before the ongoing recession that began in 2007, the average worth of HispanicLatino households as a group was thought to be about 1/10th of the average Anglo household. Without a successful HispanicLatino population to generate the appropriate tax revenues to support America’s needs, the country faces greater uncertainty than its current woes. By 2011, the recession had eroded the total net worth of the HispanicLatino household to 1/18th of its Anglo counterpart. More a function of the loss of property values, the decline will remain for the immediate future. But even at one HispanicLatino dime for every Anglo dollar, the ratio predestines America’s struggles.
It is hard to imagine how such numbers can sustain a nation. An unnerving future has arrived unless HispanicLatinos accelerate their economic, social and political progress.
Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.