Hispanic kids tally up 134%

LITTLE ROCK — A shift in the racial and ethnic makeup of Arkansas’ youngest age groups was propelled by gains among Hispanics that outpaced overall growth in the state’s under-18 population, new census numbers show.

Between 2000 and 2010, 42,940 children were added to the Hispanic population, a 134 percent increase that dwarfed the overall net increase in the under-18 population by more than 10,000. Also, the number of people identifying in the 2010 census as two or more races rose by 9,446.

Over the decade, the net gain of children in Arkansas increased by 31,106, or 4.6 percent, from 680,369 to 711,475.

The overall numbers were dragged down because the number of white children dropped by 20,872, or 4.3 percent, and the number of black children fell by 6,831, or 4.9 percent.

The findings were part of an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analysis of the latest census figures, which provide the most detailed glimpse yet of the age of the state’s population since the U.S. Census Bureau began releasing parts of the 2010 counts last winter.

Phyllis Poche, the director of the census State Data Center, said it’s unusual for growth in a particular racial group to outpace overall growth in an age group.

“I think it’s indicative of the Hispanic population in general and the growth of it,” she said.

The state’s Hispanic population grew from 3.2 percent of the overall population in 2000 to 6.4 percent, or 186,050, in 2010, census numbers show.

Of those under age 18, 74,956 were Hispanic in 2010, compared with 32,016 a decade earlier.

“We view this as good news that at least one of these groups of kids are seeing an increase,” said Rich Huddleston, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

“If you’re having declines in the other groups, then it’s important that some group increases,” he said.

The boost in the child population is particularly important for the future work force in the state’s rural areas, which have seen big population declines, he said.

But the rapidly increasing population could cause growing pains for state and local-level agencies, particularly those that serve the very young, Huddleston said.

Though a recent Annie E. Casey Foundation study showed that 83 percent of children living in aliens’ homes in Arkansas were U.S. citizens, the census numbers suggest that the state will need more programs geared toward those who don’t speak English, he said.

“Clearly, there’s going to be a greater need for special language services, translators and English as a second language in the school. ... Do we have more work to do? Yes, definitely. Just closing your eyes and putting your head in the sand is never the way to address any issue,” he said.

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer with the Pew Research Center who specializes in demographic research, said the decline in numbers of white and black children and the rise in the number of Hispanics under 18 are reflected nationally.

Racial and ethnic minority groups accounted for 91.7 percent of the nation’s population increase from 2000-10 with the bulk of the increase Hispanic, she said.

In Arkansas, the growth is most prominent among the state’s youngest populations.

Hispanics made up 12.4 percent of the state’s 5-and-under population in 2010, compared with a little more than 10 percent of those under 18.

Cohn said the growing racial and ethnic diversity among Arkansas’ younger population suggests that members of minority groups will continue to make up a sizable share of the state’s future population.

“I think it’s absolutely true that today’s young people are growing up in a much more racially and ethnically varied world than their parents and their grandparents did,” she said.

“The younger you get the more likely [the] children are to be [in] minority groups.”