Solamente Mexicanos? Patterns and sources of Hispanic diversity in U.S. metropolitan areas
Section snippets
Unpacking panethnicity
The institutionalization of Hispanic or Latino panethnicity is relatively recent, emerging from prolonged negotiations that began in the 1970s between the Census Bureau and an assortment of Latino advocacy organizations, businesses, and media over how best to classify people of ‘Spanish origin’ (Mora, 2014). Conceptually, the social construction of a panethnic population emphasizes what persons from different national or ancestral backgrounds are believed to have in common. In the case of
Data
We rely on data from the summary files (SFs) of the 1990 and 2010 decennial censuses and the 2008–2012 American Community Survey (ACS) to explore Hispanic diversity. The race by Hispanic or Latino origin crosstabulation in SF1 yields counts of Hispanics of any race and of non-Hispanic whites, blacks, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, multi-race individuals, and those reporting some other race. Collapsing categories enables us to define Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations in an
Metropolitan variation
Our initial research question asks how Latino origin group diversity differs from one metropolitan area to the next. We begin to address this question by describing the magnitude of diversity in 2010. Across all 363 metro areas, the average entropy index score equals 50, at the midpoint of E's 0–100 range. However, marked variation exists around that average. Table 1 explores the tails of the distribution, identifying the 10 most and least diverse areas by name and presenting mean
Conclusion
Our analysis offers answers to a series of understudied questions about the origin-group diversity of Hispanic populations within metropolitan areas. We find that the magnitude of Hispanic diversity, as measured by E, ranges widely. Local Latino communities with no-majority structures are concentrated at the high end of the diversity continuum; homogeneously Mexican communities, at the low end. Mexicans make up the majority or plurality origin group in more than eight of every ten metro areas.
Funding
Support for this research has been provided by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD074605). Additional support comes from the Population Research Institute of Penn State University, which receives infrastructure funding from NICHHD (P2CHD041025). The content of the paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not reflect the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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