Percent Hispanic predicts poverty better than percent black: I'm putting together Census data on all U.S. counties with populations over 250,000 as of 2000. Allow me to list some interesting findings. First, it turns out that percent Hispanic is positively correlated with a measure of income inequality (GINI index). And the correlation becomes stronger with percent black added in:
Pearson correlations, N = 220
percent Hispanic/inequality .39
percent black/inequality .34
percent poor minority/inequality .58
Liberals are so concerned about inequality, they created an entire discipline--sociology--devoted to its study. Somehow in their thousands of studies, sociologists failed to report that mass Latino immigration is growing our inequality problem, and immigration restrictions will make America more equal.
Next let's look at the percent poor:
Pearson correlations, N = 220
percent Hispanic/poverty .56
percent black/poverty .36
percent black-Hispanic/poverty .74
Blacks are the stereotypically poor group, yet a Hispanic presence predicts poverty even better. I don't recall the researchers telling us that a key approach to fighting poverty in America is to shut the door on Latino immigration.
Finally, let's look at the unemployment rate.
Pearson correlations, N = 220
percent Hispanic/unemployment .57
percent black/unemployment .07
percent poor minority/unemployment .53
Once again, unemployment brings to mind young blacks hanging on the steet corner, yet the percent of the county that is black does not predict the unemployment rate. (This is the only correlation in this post that is not statistically significant at the .05 level). Having lots of Latinos around, however, is a good sign that many people are without jobs. (Perhaps some of the unemployed are native-born people who have lost jobs to immigrants).
This, of course, contradicts the liberal claim that the American economy would come to a dead halt without the heroic labors of Latino immigrants. And would I sound repetitive if I mentioned that our beloved professors have not pushed reduced immigration from the south as an important way to reduce unemployment?
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Even a mainstream editorialist like Robert Samuelson has pointed out that our seeming inability to push down the poverty rate is due almost 100% to large scale immigration from Latin America.
ReplyDeleteRon,
ReplyDeleteGreat work. It would be interesting to how inequality and voting interact at the county level. I've looked at the state level, and both economic (r=.39) and educational inequality (r=.65) are good for Democrats, while parity is good for Republicans. I bet you could flush out stronger relationships at the county level. Strife of every kind (domestically, anyhow) boosts Democratic prospects. It's politically self-defeating for Democrats to actually attain the goals they putatively strive for.
Audacious: I can't recall the exact correlation, but the association between percent Republican and the GINI index is something like -.3--similar to your finding. I'll check.
ReplyDelete