The Demographic Components of Population Growth and Diversity in New Hispanic Destinations

Daniel T. Lichter, Cornell University
Kenneth M. Johnson, University of New Hampshire

The spatial dispersion of Hispanics to new destinations is among the most important but least anticipated U.S. population shifts over the past 30 years. Much of the attention has focused on Hispanic migration patterns and more recently on the large second-order effects of Hispanic fertility. But recent changes in the racial and ethnic composition of America’s new destinations also reflect shifting patterns of migration and natural increase among America’s non-Hispanic populations, including native-born whites. In this paper, we decompose changes over the 1990-to-2010 period in the racial and ethnic composition into four demographic components: (1) Hispanic net migration, (2) Hispanic natural increase; (3) non-Hispanic net migration; and (4) non-Hispanic natural decrease. This is accomplished using annual county data on births and deaths from the U.S. Vital Registration System, together with newly-available county net migration estimates for 2000-2010, which will be merged with previous estimates from the 1990s.