Racial, gender wage gaps persist in U.S. despite some progress

Large racial and gender wage gaps in the U.S. remain, even as they have narrowed in some cases over the years. Among full- and part-time workers in the U.S., blacks in 2015 earned just 75% as much as whites in median hourly earnings and women earned 83% as much as men.

Looking at gender, race and ethnicity combined, all groups, with the exception of Asian men, lag behind white men in terms of median hourly earnings, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. White men are often used in comparisons such as this because they are the largest demographic group in the workforce – 33% in 2015.

In 2015, average hourly wages for black and Hispanic men were $15 and $14, respectively, compared with $21 for white men. Only the hourly earnings of Asian men ($24) outpaced those of white men.

Read the full Pew Research Center story here.

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics

Pew Social and Demographic Trends
Released: July 26, 2011
Twenty-to-One
By Paul Taylor, Richard Fry and Rakesh Kochhar

Executive Summary

The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.
These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.

Full Story: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/

On Race, the Silence Is Bipartisan

The New York Times
By DESMOND S. KING and ROGERS M. SMITH
Published: September 2, 2011

THE economic crisis in the United States is also a racial crisis. White Americans are hurting, but nonwhite Americans are hurting even more. Yet leaders in both political parties — for different reasons — continue to act as though race were anachronistic and irrelevant in a country where an African-American is the president.
In July, the unemployment rate was 8.2 percent for whites, but 16.8 percent for blacks and 11.3 percent for Latinos. The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2009, the median household net worth was $5,677 for blacks, $6,325 for Hispanics and $113,149 for whites — down from $12,124, $18,539 and $134,992, respectively, in 2005.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinion/on-race-the-silence-is-bipartisan.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom

Pew Research Center Publications
by Richard Fry, Pew Research Center
June 16, 2010

Executive Summary

The recession-era boom in the size of freshman classes at four-year colleges, community colleges and trade schools has been driven largely by a sharp increase in minority student enrollment, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Department of Education.
Freshman enrollment at the nation's 6,100 post-secondary institutions surged by 144,000 students from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008. This 6% increase was the largest in 40 years1, and almost three-quarters of it came from minority freshman enrollment growth.
From 2007 to 2008 (the first year of the recession), the freshman enrollment of Hispanics at post-secondary institutions grew by 15%, of blacks by 8%, of Asians by 6% and of whites by 3%.
Some of this minority enrollment surge is a simple byproduct of demographic change. In a nation whose population of youths is far more diverse than its population of adults, each new year brings a slightly larger share of minority teenagers into the pool of potential college freshmen. In addition, the first year of the recession was a time when young Hispanics, in particular, were completing high school at record rates. According to Census Bureau surveys, the Hispanic high school completion rate reached an all-time high in October 2008 at 70%.2 This was up 2.5 percentage points over October 2007 -- a larger increase than for any other racial or ethnic group.
Minority college students tend to be clustered more at community colleges and trade schools than at four-year colleges. Even so, the minority freshman enrollment spike from 2007 to 2008 occurred at all basic levels of post-secondary education.

Continue reading the full report at pewsocialtrends.org.
Full Executive Summary: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1629/recession-era-increase-post-secondary-minority-enrollment

Working Women Ascendant--But Ambivalent

U.S. News and World Report
January 7, 2010
By Jodie Allen, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

"We Did It!" enthuses the Economist magazine, whose recent cover featured the iconic figure of World War II's Rosie the Riveter. The cause for celebration, as described in the magazine's "leader," (editorial in Americanese) is the ascent of womanhood to a majority position in the U.S. workforce, projected to occur sometime in the next few months. "Women's economic empowerment is arguably the biggest social change of our times ... Millions of women have been given more control over their own lives. And millions of brains have been put to more productive use," write the editors.
A national poll conducted last spring by the Pew Research Center finds plenty of support for the female ascendancy: Only a small minority of Americans (19 percent) now think women should return to their traditional roles in society. And according to a separate survey by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project, a mere 15 percent of the public now says that insufficient toughness on their part accounts for the scarcity of women in top business positions (though the persistence of an "old boys network" remains a retardant, according to the public).
As a woman who came of age at a time when her mother (herself a pioneering law school graduate) counseled her to start off work life by taking the federal civil service exam "because they can't weed out high scorers," I can only join in the Economist's applause. But how do most of today's Rosie Riveters feel about being "put to more productive use?"

Full Story: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/jodie-allen/2010/01/07/working-women-ascendant--but-ambivalent.html

Managers' Hiring Practices Vary By Race, Ethnicity Says University of Miami Study

CORAL GABLES, Fla., Oct. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- White, Asian and Hispanic managers tend to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers do, according to a new study out of the University of Miami School of Business Administration.
Using more than two years of personnel data from a large U.S. retail chain, the study found that when a black manager in a typical store is replaced by a white, Asian or Hispanic manager, the share of newly hired blacks falls from 21 to 17 percent, and the share of whites hired rises from 60 to 64 percent. The effect is even stronger for stores located in the South, where the replacement of a black manager causes the share of newly hired blacks to fall from 29 to 21 percent. In locations with large Hispanic populations, Hispanics hire more Hispanics and fewer whites than white managers. The study is out this month in the Journal of Labor Economics.
The finding is clear evidence that the race or ethnicity of those who make hiring decisions can have a strong impact in the racial makeup of a company's workforce, says Laura Giuliano, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Miami School of Business, who authored the study with David Levine and Jonathan Leonard from the University of California, Berkeley.
How strong is the impact? Consider a typical store with 40 employees located in the Southern U.S. According to the data, replacing a black manager with a non-black manager would result in the replacement of three to four black workers with white workers over the course of one year.
The effect in a non-Southern store would also be significant, if a bit more subtle. Replacing a black manager in a non-Southern store would result in one black worker being replaced by a white worker over a year.
"From the viewpoint of a district manager who is observing just a small sample of stores, this change might go unnoticed or appear insignificant," Giuliano said. "However, the change may appear more significant from the point of view of job seekers -- and especially black job seekers. In fact, the change in non-Southern stores amounts to a proportional decline of 15 percent in the number of blacks employed."
The data used by Giuliano and her colleagues were especially well suited to sorting out the role race plays in hiring. While previous studies have also suggested that manager race plays a role, those studies have been unable to distinguish that role from other factors such as the demographic makeup of the local labor pool. Giuliano and her colleagues were able to isolate the race factor by tracking individual stores that experienced a change of manager.
"This means we can compare the hiring patterns of consecutive managers of different races in the same store," she said. "Hence we can isolate the effect of a manager's race by comparing the hiring patterns of managers when they hire from similar labor pools under similar conditions."
The researchers were also able to use their data to offer some partial explanations for why these differences in hiring patterns exist.
They found that both black and non-black managers tend to hire people who live close to them. So if black managers live in predominantly black neighborhoods, their hiring network is also likely to be predominantly black.
The research also suggests that black managers hire fewer whites because whites may be less willing to work for black managers. The study found that when a white manager is replaced with a black manager, the rate at which white workers quit their jobs increases by 15 percent.
"We interpret this increase in the white quit rate as evidence of discriminatory sorting by white job seekers," the authors write. "It implies that whites who dislike working for black managers often avoid working for black managers in the first place."
About the University of Miami School of Business Administration
The University of Miami School of Business Administration is a comprehensive business school, offering undergraduate business, full-time MBA, Executive MBA, MS, PhD and non-degree executive education programs. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Miami, the School is located in a major hub of international trade and commerce and acclaimed for the global orientation and diversity of its faculty, students and curriculum. The School delivers its programs at its main campus in Coral Gables as well as at locations across Florida and abroad. More information about the University of Miami School of Business can be found at www.bus.miami.edu.
NOTE TO EDITORS: A full copy of the study is available upon request. The University of Miami has a television studio on campus and can provide live expert interviews via satellite or Vyvx fiber.
Media Contact:
Tracy Simon
University of Miami School of Business Administration
267-679-2774
tsimon@sba.umiami.edu
SOURCE University of Miami School of Business Administration
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=ind_focus.story&STORY=/www/story/10-15-2009/0005113487&EDATE=

Muslims Widely Seen As Facing Discrimination

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
September 9, 2009

Overview
Eight years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans see Muslims as facing more discrimination inside the U.S. than other major religious groups. Nearly six-in-ten adults (58%) say that Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination, far more than say the same about Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons. In fact, of all the groups asked about, only gays and lesbians are seen as facing more discrimination than Muslims, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of the public saying there is a lot of discrimination against homosexuals.

The poll also finds that two-thirds of non-Muslims (65%) say that Islam and their own faith are either very different or somewhat different, while just 17% take the view that Islam and their own religion are somewhat or very similar. But Islam is not the only religion that Americans see as mostly different from their own. When asked about faiths other than their own, six-in-ten adults say Buddhism is mostly different, with similar numbers saying the same about Mormonism (59%) and Hinduism (57%).

By a smaller margin, Americans are also inclined to view Judaism and Catholicism as somewhat or very different from their own faith (47% different vs. 35% similar for Judaism, 49% different vs. 43% similar for Catholicism). Only when asked about Protestantism do perceived similarities outweigh perceived differences, with 44% of non-Protestants in the survey saying Protestantism and their own faith are similar and 38% saying they are different.

Full Report: http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=436

Public Backs Affirmative Action, But Not Minority Preferences

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
June 2, 2009

With the Supreme Court expected to soon rule on a case involving job discrimination claims by white firefighters, and Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor's decision in a lower court ruling on the case drawing scrutiny there is renewed focus on public opinion about affirmative action programs and overall efforts to improve the position of minorities in this country. The public has generally been supportive of such efforts, but is decidedly opposed to the idea of providing preferential treatment to minorities.
In the most recent Pew Research Center values survey, released May 21, just 31% agreed that "we should make every effort to improve the position of blacks and minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment." More than twice as many (65%) disagreed with this statement. That balance of opinion has fluctuated only modestly through the 22-year history of the values survey.
The values survey revealed continuing racial differences in attitudes about this issue. Majorities of both African Americans (58%) and Hispanics (53%) favor preferential treatment to improve the position of blacks and other minorities; just 22% of whites agree. Divisions over this issue are mirrored in deep differences among Democratic groups. Among self-described Democrats and independents who "lean" Democratic, majorities of African Americans (60%) and Hispanics (57%) say every effort should be made to improve the position of minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment. By contrast, just 31% of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favor blacks and other minorities getting preferential treatment, while 66% are opposed.
The opinions of white Democrats on this issue are closer to those of white Republicans than they are to those of non-white Democrats. Just 12% of white Republicans favor giving minorities preferential treatment to improve their condition.

Views of Affirmative Action
While the public rejects the use of preferential treatment to improve the position of minorities, in the past it has expressed broad support for affirmative action programs aimed at helping blacks and women gain access to better jobs and education.

In January 2007, 70% said they favored "affirmative action programs to help blacks, women and other minorities get better jobs and education," while 25% opposed these programs. Support for affirmative action programs had increased substantially from the mid-1990s; in August 1995, 58% favored affirmative action programs while 36% were opposed.
Notably, between 1995 and 2007 there was a sharp increase in the proportion of whites expressing support for affirmative action programs. In 2007, 65% of whites favored these programs, up from 53% a dozen years earlier. Support among African Americans, which was overwhelming in 1995 (94%), remained so in 2007 (93%).
Pew Research surveys have found far less support for affirmative action programs when they are described as giving preferences to African Americans. In 2007, as part of a major survey about public opinion about race relations, the Pew Reserch Center's Social & Demographic Trends project asked separate groups of respondents different questions about affirmative action programs intended to "overcome past discrimination."

Full Story Including Charts and Graphs: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1240/sotomayor-supreme-court-affirmative-action-minority-preferences

[SJW Comment: This report differs in tone compared with the article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Peter Schmidt, which is decidedly anti-affirmative action. http://chronicle.com/news/article/?id=6577 At least have some integrity and cover both sides of the issue, Chronicle. I was hoping that with a new, African-American publisher (See our blog), the Chronicle would be more balanced on this issue. No such luck yet.]

Q&A: Researcher Describes Mixed Educational Benefits of Campus Diversity

Chronicle of Higher Education
February 17, 2009
Peter Schmidt

Colleges have talked for decades about the educational benefits of diversity on their campuses without offering much research to show how students are affected by exposure to members of other racial and ethnic groups. In an effort to fill that gap in knowledge, James Sidanius, a professor of psychology and of African and African-American studies at Harvard University, led a team of researchers in conducting a long-term study of about 2,000 students who entered the University of California at Los Angeles in the fall of 1996. The students were surveyed in the summer before they entered UCLA, at the end of their freshman year, and again each year until their graduation or the end of their fifth year in college.
Mr. Sidanius and the co-authors of his study—Shana Levin, an associate professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College; Colette van Laar, a professor of psychology at Leiden University, in the Netherlands; and David O. Sears, a professor of psychology and political science at UCLA–describe their results in a new book, The Diversity Challenge: Social Identity and Intergroup Relations on the College Campus, published by the Russell Sage Foundation. The Chronicle interviewed Mr. Sidanius by e-mail to ask him about the study's major findings.
Q. Please talk about how your study compares to other studies on campus diversity. Where did you tread new ground or try to build on—or put to the test—research that had been done before?
A. Our study, The Diversity Challenge, is unique in the literature concerning intergroup relations in two major ways. First, as far as we know, it is the longest panel (i.e., longitudinal) study of intergroup relations on campus ever done. And secondly, it is the most comprehensive study of its type ever attempted—that is to say, that asks the largest number of theoretically driven questions, using numerous indices of intergroup contact and intergroup attitudes.
Q. Your book says you had expected to find that "cultural diversity and the multicultural practices that universities have put in place as a response to it have some profound effects on students." What was your basis for having such expectations? Instead of finding profound effects—good or bad—your book reaches the bottom-line conclusions that cultural diversity and multicultural practices failed to either significantly change students' ethnic identities and views on race or to have the feared effects of heightening ethnic conflict and separation on campus. At the end of the day, does your study buttress—or does it undermine—the argument that race-conscious college-admissions policies serve a compelling government interest by producing educational benefits? In which direction (and how far) does your study move the ball in the affirmative-action debate?
A. We found that neither the multicultural policies of the university nor the general multiethnic environment had profound effects on the intergroup attitudes of the students. Thus, in broad terms, the students left the university with largely the same social and political views that they entered college with.
However, three facts show that this does not mean that there were no theoretically expected changes. First, in general, students did become less politically conservative, ethnocentric, and racist over four years of college. Secondly, for the most part, increased levels of intergroup contact (e.g., in the form of having roommates from other ethnic groups) did attenuate levels of racism, and increased positive affect for members of other ethnic outgroups. Thirdly, in terms of the effects of affirmative action, we were interested in addressing the issue of whether or not being an affirmative-action admittee affected the academic self-confidence and academic performance of minority students. The negative effects of affirmative action on student performance were complex and conditional. For example, for black students who thought that they were affirmative-action admittees, grade-point average was negatively affected, but only among those with high personal-identity stereotype threat (concerns about confirming negative stereotypes of their ethnic groups). However, among those with no such stereotype-threat concerns, being an affirmative-action admittee had no deleterious effects on academic achievement....

Q. On a related note, your study involves students who entered college 12 years ago. Are you confident that a study undertaken today would reach similar conclusions, or, especially given the election of Barack Obama, is there reason to hope students' attitudes toward race and ethnicity have changed?
A. While there is no reason to believe that, in and of itself, the 12-year time gap will have made a substantial difference in the results we found, we cannot be as certain about the possible effects of Barack Obama's electoral victory. While there is little reason to actually believe that Obama's election has sent America into a state of post-racialism, there is probably a substantial number of whites who might believe this to be the case. It is not at all clear what the net results of this will be. This election might augur in a period of substantially relaxed racial attitudes and attenuated levels of institutional discrimination. On the other hand, Obama's election might convince people that postracialism has indeed become a fact of American life, and that no further efforts to eliminate group-based disadvantage and discrimination are necessary. It is simply too early to tell.

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/02/11811n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Are College Athletes Psyching Themselves Out?

Inside Higher Ed
February 11, 2009

More than a year ago, a major study of 71 Division III member institutions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association documented a significant academic achievement gap separating male athletes and non-athletes at selective liberal arts colleges. Although admissions practices — potentially biased in favor of enrolling athletes — might be to blame for this gap, a new study suggests that the perceived threat among athletes of confirming the negative stereotype of the “dumb jock” might also help perpetuate the gap.

A new “working paper,” released this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, explores a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” among athletes at Swarthmore College. Thomas S. Dee, the paper’s author and Swarthmore economics professor, writes that this trend “refers to the perceived risk of confirming, through one’s behavior or outcomes, negative stereotypes that are held about one’s social identity.” Dee argues that the “stigma” attached to athletic participation at some selective institutions might trigger the “stereotype threat” response among athletes, accounting for some portion of their weaker academic performance.

Full Story: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/11/stereotype

America's Universities Are Living a Diversity Lie

AAAA Note: This is quite a surprising story from the primary affirmative action and diversity writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Does it reflect the editorial policy of the Chronicle, the nation's most prestigious news publication at the college and university level?

The Wall Street Journal
By PETER SCHMIDT
June 28, 2008; Page A11

Thirty years ago this past week, Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. condemned our nation's selective colleges and universities to live a lie. Writing the deciding opinion in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, he prompted these institutions to justify their use of racial preferences in admissions with a rationale most had never considered and still do not believe – a desire to offer a better education to all students.
To this day, few colleges have even tried to establish that their race-conscious admissions policies yield broad educational benefits. The research is so fuzzy and methodologically weak that some strident proponents of affirmative action admit that social science is not on their side.
In reality, colleges profess a deep belief in the educational benefits of their affirmative-action policies mainly to save their necks. They know that, if the truth came out, courts could find them guilty of illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.
Selective colleges began lowering the bar for minority applicants back in the late 1960s to promote social justice and help keep the peace. They felt an obligation to help remedy society's racial discrimination, even if they generally weren't willing to acknowledge their own. And with riots devastating the nation's big cities, they saw a need to send black America a clear signal that the establishment it was rebelling against was in fact open to it – and that getting a good college education, not violence, represented the best path to wealth and power.
In the mid 1970s, when colleges talked about the educational benefits of race-conscious admissions, what they had in mind were the benefits reaped by minority students. And tellingly, the University of California had said nothing about the educational benefits of diversity in defending the UC-Davis medical school's strict racial quotas against the lawsuit brought by Allan P. Bakke, a rejected white applicant.
When the U.S. Supreme Court took up that decision on appeal, however, the educational diversity argument was tucked into a few of the many friend-of-the-court briefs submitted in the case.
Justice Powell would come to rely heavily on one of those briefs, in which Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania joined in arguing, without any empirical evidence, that diversity "makes the university a better learning environment." Like the four other conservatives on the court, Powell rejected the social-justice rationale for such policies, arguing that the government should not be in the business of deciding which segments of American society owed what to whom for past misdeeds. Nevertheless, he did not want the court to be radically changing how colleges did business. Looking for a way out, he ended up saying the four elite colleges had convinced him of the educational benefits of treating some applicants' minority status as a "plus factor."
Most selective colleges interpreted Justice Powell's controlling opinion in the case as a green light to keep doing what they had been as far as racial and ethnic-group admissions preferences were concerned. At the same time, they fretted little about how their campuses were actually becoming less diverse in socioeconomic terms as they jacked up tuitions and increasingly favored applicants from families wealthy enough to fatten endowments and pay their children's full fare. And despite a professed concern with viewpoint diversity, some colleges adopted rigid speech codes aimed at squelching statements that made minority students uncomfortable.
Academe got a rude awakening in 1996. Californians passed a ballot measure in that year barring public colleges from considering race and ethnicity in admissions. And a federal appeals court rejected Justice Powell's diversity rationale in a lawsuit, Hopwood v. Texas, involving the University of Texas law school. In his book, "Diversity Challenged," Gary Orfield, a staunch advocate of affirmative action, says people in higher education looked around and suddenly realized "no consensus existed on the benefits of diversity" and "the research had not been done to prove the academic benefits."
Over the next several years, education researchers scrambled to find such proof and repeatedly met with college leaders to discuss their progress. Their work took on a sense of urgency, on the expectation the Supreme Court would soon be revisiting Bakke. Yet again and again, their studies were shown to have gaping holes and deemed too weak to hold up in the courts.
Fortunately for affirmative-action advocates, the Center for Individual Rights, which coordinated the legal assault on race-conscious admissions, made a tactical decision not to seriously challenge such research – out of a belief it could win on legal principle. When the Supreme Court waded back into the controversy, it reaffirmed Justice Powell's diversity rationale in a 2003 decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, involving the University of Michigan law school. The opinions revealed that the majority of justices had been swayed by a barrage of friend-of-the-court briefs spinning and exaggerating what the research said about the alleged educational benefits of diversity.
Proponents of race-conscious admissions policies have yet to produce a study of their educational benefits without some limitation or flaw. Many focus only on benefits to minority students. Others define benefits in nakedly ideological terms, declaring the policies successful if they seem correlated with the adoption of liberal views. A large share relies on survey data that substitute subjective opinions for an objective measurement of learning. The University of Michigan's star witness, Patricia Gurin, a professor of psychology and women's studies, presented studies showing the educational benefits of classes and campus programs that promote interracial understanding. Those may exist at colleges that don't consider an applicant's race.
Affirmative action advocates argue that it is unreasonable to expect more of the research, because no education policy has incontrovertible proof of effectiveness. But affirmative-action preferences are not just any education policy; they require some students to suffer racial discrimination for the sake of a perceived common good. In grounding his definition of that good in the shifting sands of social science, Justice Powell may have left colleges legally vulnerable for decades to come. The courts, after all, are known for diverse opinions. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121460672212612067-lMyQjAxMDI4MTI0ODYyMDg2Wj.html

Whites to be minority in US by 2050: study

Yahoo News
Mon Feb 11, 11:50 AM ET

Immigration will drive the population of the United States sharply upward between now and 2050, and will push whites into a minority, projections by the Pew Research Center showed Monday.
"If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005," an increase of nearly 50 percent, the study by the Washington-based think-tank said.
More than 80 percent of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving in the country and their US-born children, who will make up nearly one in five Americans by 2050 compared with one in eight in 2005, it said.
Whites, who currently make up around two-thirds of the US population, will become a minority (47 percent) by 2050, the report said.
The Hispanic population, currently the largest minority group, will triple in size and double in percentage terms from 14 percent in 2005 to 29 percent in 2050, the report said.
The Asian population will roughly double in percentage terms, from five percent to nine percent, while the black population will remain static at around 13 percent.
The projections are based on trends over the past 50 years, during which legal and illegal immigration have played an increasing role in US population growth, the report said.
From 1960 to 2005, new immigrants and their US-born descendants accounted for 51 percent of population increase, and for 58 percent from 1980 to 2005, the report said.
But, the report warned, "possible future changes in immigration policy" could impact the projections. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080211/ts_alt_afp/uspopulationimmigrationethnic;_ylt=Ahynkvab0zeGEDTNHIndw_Ws0NUE