Demographic trends have long predicted that Latinos will be a large proportion of the country’s population, workforce, and economy. These forecasts are a reality today in California, where we get a glimpse into the nation’s demographic and economic future. Today, California has the largest Hispanic population in the nation, with two in every five Californians (39%) identifying as Latino. Nationally, the U.S. Hispanic population stands at 56 million and, by 2050, is estimated to reach 106 million, accounting for one out of every four people in the country. A new report by NCLR’s Economic Policy Project examines Latinos’ status across a range of indicators in California and offers recommendations for public policies at the state and national level that can...
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on RollCall.com on January 13, 2016. We have a proposition for the Trump administration and the new Congress, and it’s not a liberal or a conservative idea. It’s just a call for pragmatism when developing new federal policies over the next four years. For too long, even when coming together to enact laws to accomplish noble goals, Congress and previous presidents have ignored the unintended effects of “one-size-fits-all” legislation on the racial wealth divide in this country. What seems like a great idea — making college more affordable, for example — can actually feed the divide. Republicans and Democrats alike agree that the racial wealth gap is horribly skewed and growing. The median...
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Throughout our history, the National Urban League has taken seriously our responsibility to hold the President of the United States accountable to the needs of urban America and communities of color. As President Barack Obama prepares to leave office on January 20, we present the Obama Scorecard to assess the first African American president’s impact and legacy. In creating this scorecard, we considered two important questions: (1) is the nation better off than it was eight years ago? and (2) is Black America better off than it was eight years ago? The answer to both questions is, unequivocally, yes. The Scorecard evaluates the Obama Administration’s successes and shortcomings in education, health, housing, economic development, and civil rights After factoring in...
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The U.S. Constitution was ratified a full 228 years ago. The cutting edge technology that year was the steamboat, and the country had not yet even had a presidential election. If 228 years seems like a really long time, that’s because it is. But if current trends continue, that’s how long it will take for the average black family to reach the level of wealth the average white family has today. The average Latino family fares slightly better—if the current trend continues, it would take them a little more than 80 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today. Racial discrepancies in income and wealth are nothing new in this country. The troubling thing is that...
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Many of the Latino community’s struggles recently have centered around economic stability in the wake of the Great Recession. The Hispanic community lost more than 66 percent of its wealth in the recession and has not yet recovered lost ground. In order to understand more about Latino households’ ongoing economic challenges and how they’re overcoming them, NCLR established a Financial Services Advisory Council with the support of Citi Community Development, the Ford Foundation, and Master Your Card: Oportunidad. The Financial Services Advisory Council is composed of a group of 10 NCLR Affiliates who serve more than 40,000 clients annually and provide input on how their clients are interacting with financial institutions, what products and services are most useful to them, and...
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