This blog is intended to go along with Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, by John R. Weeks, published by Cengage Learning. The latest edition is the 13th (it will be out in January 2020), but this blog is meant to complement any edition of the book by showing the way in which demographic issues are regularly in the news.

You can download an iPhone app for the 13th edition from the App Store (search for Weeks Population).

If you are a user of my textbook and would like to suggest a blog post idea, please email me at: john.weeks@sdsu.edu

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Central Americans Account for the Majority of Latinos in Maryland

The Washington Examiner has a story today about the high percentage of Latinos in Maryland that are from Central America, especially El Salvador, despite the fact that the average American probably thinks that anyone speaking Spanish is from Mexico (which the US government now typically defines as being in North America, rather than Central America).
Central Americans now make up the majority of Maryland's Hispanic population -- the fastest-growing population in the state -- a growth primarily led by a large influx of Salvadorans over the last decade, new Census data shows.
In the last decade, the number of Salvadorans statewide more than tripled and their share of Maryland's Hispanic population increased by 11 percentage points, the largest jump of any group.
"It's important to keep in mind that a lot of growth is coming from children, so that has its own set of issues associated with it," said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. "[Especially] with certain countries like El Salvador and Guatemala where the economy and political conditions were so harsh that people who would not normally leave did leave."
This general pattern is not really news, of course, if you have read my Population text or the book "Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the United States and Its Effects on the South," written by my son, Greg Weeks, and I. Still, it is interesting to see that the 2010 Census data are corroborating the trends that we have been seeing over time.

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