New Latino Role in Middle Class

California’s Latinos, often tabbed as an economic underclass with few community achievements, have begun to remake that unfair image, and a new study sponsored by Pepperdine University’s Institute for Public Policy has validated the gains, especially the rise of the Latino middle class.

Latinos have always been in a peculiar social situation in the state. While some can claim descent from the original Spanish-speaking settlers in 1769, others form the bulk of the recent arrivals. This range of history and status has created mixed perceptions about Latino families. Yes, newly arrived Latinos often do struggle with poverty, as the study attests. But their plight represents only one side of the story; the Pepperdine report reveals that the American-born children and grandchildren of Latino immigrants have fared considerably better.

Furthermore, in its analysis of the complete immigrant experience of Latinos, the study concludes that their lives in the United States are not too different from those of other immigrants. Considering that Latinos in 1990 constituted about one-third of the population of Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the study’s findings are good news for the overall society. The portrait is that of a hard-working, family-oriented people with a strong entrepreneurial spirit. It describes how by pooling family resources Latinos have gradually increased their household incomes, purchased homes and shared in the American dream.

Joel Kotkin, one of the editors of the study, says, “The future of L.A. has a lot to do with how Latinos do.” And Latinos, the study says, are doing remarkably well in light of the fact that two-thirds of Latino households in the region are headed by immigrants who, in the vast majority, arrived in this country with little money and only an elementary school education.

Notice, for instance, that almost 50% of Latino households headed by U.S.-born adults have a median income of $35,000. And 51% of households headed by the American-born own their dwellings, while 31% of households headed by foreign-born Latinos own residences. This is a settled community.

Today, according to the study, the Latino middle class is numerically larger than the combined African American and Asian American middle classes of the region. This fact among others was not generally recognized. The information in this report has the potential to create new thinking.