[StBernard] Growing Hispanic Population in Louisiana: July 1, 2008 Population Estimates by Race and Ethnicity released today

[Westley Annis]

On May 14, 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau released the July 1, 2008
race-specific population estimates for Louisiana Parishes.  ( See detailed
data tables: http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.html)   Race-specific
population data provide insight into the changing racial and ethnic
diversity in Louisiana Parishes and Metropolitan Areas between 2007 and
2008.  For the population as a whole, the state grew by .86%.  However, the
rates of growth for specific race and ethnicity groups vary substantially.
The largest deviation from the state growth rate occurs among the Hispanic
population which grew by 4.83%, while the non-Hispanic white population grew
by only .14% and the non-Hispanic black population grew at 1.64%.  The rate
of population growth among Hispanics is 4.6 times that of the overall state
rate of population growth.  In addition, the growth rate among Louisiana's
Hispanic population is larger the national growth rate for the Hispanic
population of 3.2%.  We further examine the variation in this trend by
metropolitan areas and individual parishes.

 

For metropolitan areas, all regions with the exceptions of New Orleans and
Alexandria experienced an increase in the rate of Hispanic population growth
between the 2006-2007 and the 2007-2008 time periods (see Table 1).  A
number of noteworthy trends emerge:

 

*	The Lake Charles MSA experienced the largest rate of growth among
all metropolitan regions and increased from 6.2 (2006-2007) to 7.7%
(2007-2008).  
*	The largest slowdown in the rate of growth among Hispanics occurred
in the New Orleans MSA.  The change in the rate for New Orleans is expected
given the slowdown in overall population growth (from 11.8% in 2006-2007 to
2.2% in 2007-2008).
*	Rates of growth decline relative to the distance between Louisiana
metro areas and large Texas metropolitan areas.

 

Table 1.  Percent Growth in Hispanic Population for LA Metropolitan Areas



 

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census Bureau 2008 Population Estimates Data by
Age, Race, and Sex.

 

For Louisiana Parishes, those experiencing the highest growth rate in
Hispanic population are located primarily in South Louisiana.  Table 2
reports the Top 20 parishes with the fastest growing Hispanic population
between 2007 and 2008.  A key trend in these data is that Hispanic
population is not always correlated with total parish population growth.
For example, Franklin and Plaquemines Parishes are experiencing population
decline.  However, the rate of growth in the Hispanic population remains
quite large relative to other Louisiana Parishes.  This may occur for two
reasons: 1) in-migration to fill labor demands created by out-migration or
2) natural increase among current Hispanic residents.  It is difficult to
identify how these two issues may be fueling high growth rates in the past
year because race specific population estimates do not provide components of
population change (births, deaths, net migration).  We should have a better
understanding of this issue as American Community Survey data are released
for smaller localities.  

 

Table 2.  Top 20 Parishes for Percent Hispanic Population Growth 



Source: Analysis of U.S. Census Bureau 2008 Population Estimates Data by
Age, Race, and Sex by Troy Blanchard, Louisiana State University-Department
of Sociology, and Karen Paterson, Louisiana State Census Data Center,
Division of Administration

 

Census news release:
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/013734.
html

 

Detailed tables for population estimates:
http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.html