Most impoverished in the US are Dominicans and Salvadoreans

According to a blog post from the Census Bureau yesterday, Hispanics in the United States of Colombian, Cuban, and Mexican heritage had more material hardship in 2020 than those of Dominican and El Salvadoran descent.

In the United States, about one in three (34.8%) Hispanics and one in four (24.3%) non-Hispanics lived in a home that struggled financially in 2020, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2021 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The survey is based on three indicators: housing, bill-paying issues, and food insecurity. According to Zachary Scherer and Yers Mayol-blog Garca’s post, “the variations in financial suffering were apparent among Hispanic origin groups.”

In 2020, half of those with Dominican (50.5%) and Salvadoran (49.2%) ancestry experienced such issues; in contrast, people of Colombian ancestry saw the least amount of material hardship (23.3%). Mexicans come in at 33.0%, followed by Cubans at 29.4%. These kinds of variances can be attributed to a variety of things, including past educational and professional experiences, English proficiency, geographic area, or race, among others.

They note that the biggest proportion of black or mixed Hispanics are of Dominican heritage, which may have an impact “because the majority of Latinos claimed that a darker skin color impacts opportunities” in the United States. Many Dominicans struggled to communicate in English.