percent of all Hispanic-Americans over
the age of 18 who arrived in the United
States after 2000 report that they speak
English “less than very well.” In turn, lan-
guage may in part explain why, on aver-
age, Hispanic Americans are poorer than
any other ethnic group in the United
States except Native Americans. A 2006
survey showed that nearly a third of all
Hispanic Americans earned less than
$25,000 a year. Poverty rates for different
Hispanic ethnicities varied widely in a
2002 study, however, ranging from a low
of 12.9 percent in the case of Cuban
Americans to a high of 29.9 percent in
the case of Dominican Americans. The
survey also reported poverty rates of
22.8 percent for Puerto Ricans living in
the United States, 21.2 percent for
Mexican Americans and 12.9 percent
for both Central Americans and Cuban
Americans.
Behind Hispanic poverty lie several
factors. Many Hispanics are recent immi-
grants with few skills, working in low-
wage occupations. Hispanics are twice as
likely as whites to be employed in
unskilled jobs and 50 percent more likely
to labor in the service sector. In some
cases, as with Mexican-American migrant
workers in the Southwest, generations of
discrimination have contributed to keep-
ing their earnings low.
Higher than average poverty rates
impact other spheres of life, such as
health and crime. In 2000, for example,
27.9 percent of Hispanics were victims of
violent crimes, compared with 26.5 per-
cent of non-Hispanic whites. In the area
of health care, Hispanic Americans tend
to be less healthy than non-Hispanic
whites, for example, receiving less fre-
quent prenatal care and experiencing
higher rates of death in childbirth. (The
U.S. Census Bureau often compares
Hispanic demographic data to those of
non-Hispanic whites, instead of using
data for the U.S. population as a whole. It
is for that reason that the comparison is
used here.)
Signs of improvement in the health
and well-being of Hispanics as a whole
are somewhat mixed. Individual Hispanic
Americans are more than twice as likely
to lack health insurance as the general
population, with 34.1 percent of
Hispanics lacking coverage, while just
15.8 percent of the general populationHISPANIC AMERICA TODAY 227Increase in Hispanic Households by State, 1995–2005