Some Interesting Statistics on Latinos in Brooklyn

The charts below are screenshots from a presentation (video) made on  April 19, 2016 at the Brooklyn Historical Society by Laird Bergad, Executive Director of CUNY's Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies.

He was part of a panel on the the changing demographics of the Latino community, which also included Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, and Javier Valdes, Co-Executive Director of Make the Road NY, and was moderated by Jarrett Murphy, Executive Editor of City Limits magazine.

Among the points, keyed to the graphics below (with most statistics as of 2014, with the history going back to 1980):

• the Latino population is located most significantly in Sunset Park, Bushwick, and Williamsburg, but there are certainly other neighborhoods, including East New York, Canarsie, Cypress Hills (just west of Woodhaven), Coney Island, and Red Hook.
• while Puerto Ricans represent the largest share of Latinos (after all, they're citizens), the second-largest group is of Mexican heritage, then Dominican Republic, then Ecuador (I'd note that there are far more people from Colombia and Peru in Queens)
• the Latino population in Brooklyn, over the last 35 years, has stayed around 20%
• as a percentage of the city's Latinos, Brooklyn Latinos have dropped from 28% to 21%, likely because of growth in the Bronx and Queens
• more than 30% of the city's Mexicans live in Brooklyn, while the figures for Puerto Ricans (24%) and Dominicans (14%) reflect large populations in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan
• the Puerto Rican population of Brooklyn has steadily dropped, even as more of them are mainland-born
• the Mexican population has rocketed from under 10,000 to nearly 118,000
• the Dominican population has stabilized
• the non-Puerto Rican population is steadily U.S. born, but is still under 44%
• though the numbers have improved, Latinos still lag in terms of percentage of high school and college graduates
• nearly 80% of Latinos are citizens (I wonder about that, actually)
• the percentage of Latinos in poverty has declined, from more than 40% to 29%, but that does not include the near-poor
• household income has risen only modestly, especially compared to non-Hispanic whites or blacks
• while more than 79% of Latinos say they speak English well, but nearly that many speak Spanish at home

Some other points in the discussion, though not keyed to graphics:

• women graduate from college far for than men
• some of those facing displacement are moving to Allentown and Reading, PA
• others double or triple up, in neighborhoods like East New York or Canarsie
• successful Puerto Ricans are moving to the suburbs
• WhatsApp links people with their home countries
• more recent arrivals have stronger ties with their home countries
• compared to those from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rican students are less connected to their homeland
• Latinos vote at the lowest rates
• intermarriage means a mingling of nationalities, especially for Puerto Ricans