Download or read book U.S. Hispanics--changing the Face of America written by Cary B. Davis and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With relatively high fertility and growing legal and illegal immigration, the U.S. Hispanic population increased by some 265 percent from an estimated 4 million in 1950 to 14.6 million and 6.4 percent of the total population counted in the 1980 census. By 2020 they could number some 47 million and displace blacks as the largest U.S. minority if immigration were to continue at the recent estimated level of one million a year (legal plus illegal, Hispanics plus all others). Self-identified as persons who trave their heritage to Spanish-speaking countries, Hispanics consist of Mexican-Americans (60 percent of the total), still concentrated in the Southwest; puerto Ricans living main in New York and New Jersey; Cubans headquartered in Florida; and the second-largest, more scattered :Other Hispanic: group from some 16 other Latin American countries and Spain, plus some other Mexican Americans established many generations in the Southwest. Fully 88 percent of Hispanics, compared to 75 percent of the general popluation, live in metropolitan areas. Except for Cubans, Hispanics are younger than the U.S. average (a median of 23 years versus the general median of 30 in 1980) and have higher fertility (an estimated 2.5 versus 1.8 births per woman), though their life expectancy may now equal that of all U.S. whites. They are also more likely to be divorced or separated and live in female-headed families. Hispanic occupational status and educational attainment still lag far behind the U.S. average, unemployment is 40-50 percent higher, and Hispanic families average 70 percent of the median income and 2.7 times the poverty rate of all U.S. white families. But younger Hispanics and Cubans in particular are beginning to catch up, as is likely also for future generations of U.S. Hispanics. However, with their common language and large numbers (including a large, if unknown, number of "undocumented" aliens), assimilation into the U.S. "melting pot" may take longer for Hispanics than it did for toher immigrant ethnic groups before them.