The percentage of U.S. Latinos living in poverty has dropped significantly in the last decade but is well above the national average.
Why it matters: Latinos make up 19% of the population and are set to be a plurality of the country’s population by midcentury. Failure to address systemic economic inequalities may act as a drag on the nation’s future prosperity, some experts say.
By the numbers: According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, 16.8% of Latinos — 10 million — nationally lived in poverty in 2022.
- That’s well above the nation’s overall poverty rate of 11.5%, but below what the Latino rate was in 2012 — more than 25%.
- Alabama has the highest share of Latinos who live in poverty (nearly 28%), according to an Axios analysis of census data.
- Montana was second (24.2%) followed by Pennsylvania (23.9%).
Wyoming had the lowest percentage of Latinos living in poverty (10.2%), likely because of the large number of well-paying oil and gas jobs.
- North Dakota, which also has many oil and gas jobs — and which saw the fastest Hispanic population growth of any state over the last decade — had a Latino poverty rate of 12.5%.
Zoom in: The percentage of Latinos in poverty hovered around 22% for much of the 1970s but shot up to 29% in the 1980s as the population kept growing.
- It hit its highest mark in modern times in 1994 — 30.7% — following the recession of the early 1990s and a spike in new migration from Mexico after the Mexican peso devaluation crisis.
- Latinos in recent years have significantly grown their workforce participation rate and graduated from college in higher numbers, helping drive the decrease in the Hispanic poverty rate.
What they’re saying: Addressing poverty is one of the most pressing issues facing Hispanics in the U.S., says José Jurado Vadillo a research economist at Seidman Institute, Arizona State University, tells Axios.
- Better access to credit and to quality education would help reduce Latino poverty, Vadillo adds.
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