Tag Archives: Applied Population Laboratory

A Portrait of Hmong in Wisconsin

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Image provided by UW–Madison Applied Population Laboratory

Image provided by UW–Madison Applied Population Laboratory

The population of Hmong in Wisconsin is still growing, but more slowly than in the 1990s—and, as of 2010, most Hmong living in Wisconsin were born in the United States. While the 1990s saw a significant reduction in poverty among Hmong, they made fewer gains in this century’s first decade. Nearly one in five Hmong remain below the poverty level.

These are some findings recently published in Hmong in Wisconsin: A Statistical Overview, a report by the UW–Extension/CALS-based Applied Population Laboratory, drawing upon data from
the U.S. Census, the American Community Survey and Wisconsin state health and public instruction agencies.

The report provides valuable information for state and local agencies, educators and other organizations that work with Hmong in Wisconsin, notes Dan Veroff, a UW–Extension demographic specialist and report co-author.

“It provides a broad range of data to both contextualize and understand the assets and needs of Hmong communities,” says Veroff. “Information in the report has been used to design educational programs, improve services for Hmong communities, apply for grants, and set the table for more focused outreach or research.”

One example comes from Yang Sao Xiong, who joined UW–Madison in 2013 as the first tenure-track faculty member in Hmong American Studies. Xiong notes that the high percentage of Hmong K–12 students (including those born in the U.S.) who are classified as limited English proficient, or LEP, is “alarming”: “It is likely that in some Wisconsin counties and school districts, Hmong students are over-identified as LEP students.” Making those circumstances publicly visible in a report is important for encouraging further investigation, he says.

Other findings include:

• The 2010 U.S. Census reported that some 47,000 Hmong live in Wisconsin, the state with the third-largest Hmong population, after California and Minnesota.
• The Hmong population is concentrated in a handful of counties. Milwaukee County has almost twice the Hmong population of the second-highest county, Marathon.
• The percentage of Hmong who speak English at home more than doubled between 2000 and 2010.
• Labor force participation and educational attainment both improved significantly for the Hmong between 2000 and 2006–2010. However, the recession appears to have attenuated some of the potential economic gains that might have occurred otherwise.

The report is available for viewing or downloading at http://www.apl.wisc.edu/publications/hmong_chartbook_2010.pdf

A Look at Wisconsin’s Latino Population

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Wisconsin’s Latino population is 74 percent larger and significantly more homegrown today than it was at the beginning of the century, according to a report by CALS demographers.

The number of Latinos residing in Wisconsin increased from 193,000 to 336,000 between 2000 and 2010, and the share of those who were born in Wisconsin rose from 40 percent to 45 percent, according to the report by the CALS-based Applied Population Laboratory. The share born outside the United States dropped from 40 percent to 36 percent, while the portion born in other states remained around 20 percent.

Ninety percent of Wisconsin’s Latinos live in urban counties—37 percent in Milwaukee County alone—compared to about 70 percent of all Wisconsin residents, the report notes. But while relatively few Latinos live in rural areas, some of the highest rates of growth are occurring far from urban centers. In Trempealeau County the Latino population rose from 240 to 1,667, a sixfold increase. In Lafayette County it went from 92 to 522, a fivefold increase.

“In many rural counties, in-migration by Latinos has stemmed population declines and filled gaps in the labor market caused by young non- Hispanic whites moving out,” says report co-author David Long, a researcher in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology.

The 58-page report, Latinos in Wisconsin, uses graphics and text to provide a statistical portrait of Latinos across the state, with details on such factors as income, employment, education, language proficiency, housing and health insurance. There’s also a companion set of “Latino Population Briefs,” one for every county.

Among other findings in the report:

  • The age distribution of Latinos differs markedly from that of the state as a whole. While the biggest age groups in the general population consist of baby boomers—ages 46–64—the largest among Latinos are children under age 10.
  • Trends in education are in the right direction, but Latinos still lag behind the general population. “The estimated share of Latinos with less than a high school diploma declined from 45 percent to 40 percent, but that’s still four times greater than the share of the total population without a diploma,” Long notes.
  • The poverty rate among Latinos is more than twice that of the overall population, and while the state’s median household income has more than kept pace with inflation since 2000, Wisconsin Latinos’ buying power fell by more than $10,000.

Data in the report came from the 2010 census and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and various state agencies. The report and briefs are available online at www.apl.wisc.edu.

 

Coming and Going

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You can tell a lot about what a community has to offer by the types of people who are moving in and the types who choose to leave.

Whether an area attracts or loses residents of a certain age group, race or gender says something about the opportunities and amenities you’ll find there, points out Katherine Curtis, a CALS/UW-Extension professor of community and environmental sociology.

Curtis, a researcher at the CALS-based Applied Population Laboratory (APL), is part of a multistate team that has developed new estimates of net migration—the difference between residents moving in and out—for every U.S. county from 2000 to 2010. The estimates are broken down by age, sex and race. Combined with similar estimates from previous decades, the new numbers offer a chance to make decade-by-decade comparisons of migration by age group from 1950 to present.

Those 60 years’ worth of estimates are available online at www.netmigration.wisc.edu, where users can graph, map and compare migration trends for counties across the nation. The site was created by APL web developer Jim Beaudoin.

“Examining net migration trends helps tell stories of regional and community character and social change,” says APL director Dan Veroff.

For example, Kenosha County’s migration signature shows the shift from manufacturing (an influx of people in their 20s) to rust belt decline (a net loss in the same age group) to suburban (a big gain of people in their 30s) as the area went through auto manufacturing’s boom and bust, then became home to people commuting to Chicago-area jobs.

At the opposite end of the state, net migration in Burnett and Vilas counties is sharply negative for people in their 20s—an exodus typical in remote rural areas—and highest for those in their 60s, as retirees settle to enjoy the lakes and forests. As a result, these counties have some of the state’s fastest-aging populations.

“When we see how these things line up over time we can get a glimpse of the future as well,” Veroff says. “This is useful for people who need to plan for providing services. It can show if a certain population is going to be stable, or decline or increase. School districts, for example, can use it to project enrollment trends.”

While net migration data has been available in the past, it used to require the skills and tools of a demographer to tease it out of large and complicated datasets. The new website eliminates that barrier, Veroff notes.

“One of our goals is to democratize data,” he says. “This effort fits squarely in that realm—making useful data available and easy to use for people in many different positions.”