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Latino Youth in New York City. School, Work, and Income Trends for New York’s Largest Group of Young People. Lazar Treschan, Director of Youth Policy January 31, 2011. Outline of Presentation. Background & Methodology Demographics School and Work Income and Poverty Further Questions.
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Latino Youth in New York City School, Work, and Income Trends for New York’s Largest Group of Young People Lazar Treschan, Director of Youth Policy January 31, 2011
Outline of Presentation • Background & Methodology • Demographics • School and Work • Income and Poverty • Further Questions
Background and Methodology • CSS’s previous work in this area • Out of School, Out of Work… Out of Luck? • Out of Focus • From Basic Skills to Better Futures • Data for this report • Merged 2006-2008 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey • Data notes • How the U.S. Census Bureau asks questions • How we code responses
Born in the USA: Language Not an Issue for Most Latino Youth
Educational Attainment of Out-of-School Youth:The Latino Skills Gap, by Nativity
Educational Attainment of Out-of-School Youth:The Latino Skills Gap, by Gender
School and Work Rates Among Latino Youth: Differences Emerge
Summary Notes • As the largest group of young people in New York City, Latino youth are a population that deserves policy attention. • While it is important to understand their key commonalities, Latinos are a diverse ethnic group, and we see divergent stories among the major sub-populations.
Summary Notes • Dominican young people, the largest sub-group of Latino youth, do relatively well in terms of school, work, and poverty when compared with Puerto Ricans and other Latino youth, but poorly when compared with Whites and Asians. • Dominican young people, particularly young women, do show particularly strong outcomes in terms of attending college, a gateway to the middle class.
Summary Notes • Puerto Ricans face the greatest challenges of all youth sub-groups, despite the fact that they are born here. • Puerto Rican youth have lower rates of school enrollment, educational attainment, and alarmingly higher rates of disconnection and poverty than other native-born Latino youth. • Puerto Rican males have rates of inactivity in school and work that exceed those of black male youth, a population that receives more public policy discussion.
Summary Notes • Mexican young people are not easily comparable to any other Latino youth group – a largely immigrant population that comes to New York seeking employment. • Despite lower rates of educational attainment than any other group, Mexican youth are able to find work, and these jobs appear to help keep their households from falling below the federal poverty line. • Households in which young Mexicans live largely have near-poverty incomes, which likely lead to vulnerability and many financial hardships.
Summary Notes • Other Latinos, who are largely comprised of South and Central Americans, show promising tendencies in terms of household incomes. • Despite rates of school enrollment, educational attainment, and employment that do not stand out as particularly strong, they have some of the lowest rates of household poverty and the highest shares of moderate-income households.
Summary Notes • Poverty is impacting school and work rates, and/or the reverse is true -- it is possible that these dynamics affect one another, thus snowballing each of these challenges. • Targeting social policy interventions on Latino youth: the challenges Latino young people face in terms of school enrollment and educational attainment will not be solved just with better English Language Learner (ELL) programs; overwhelmingly, Latino young people are strong English speakers.
Considerations for Policy • Native-born Latino youth, Puerto Ricans in particular, are out of school in high numbers, having attained very low levels of education before they left school, and are having difficulties entering the workforce. • Efforts to address these issues that only focus on school reform are ignorant of the fact that tens of thousands of Latino youth have already been left behind. • The out-of-school youth population needs to be at the center of community development policy.
Considerations for Policy • Due to their low levels of educational attainment, if Latino youth are to succeed in the workforce they will first need the basic skills that will allow them to obtain and perform in their early job experiences. • Any efforts to prepare the young adult workforce must focus on the development of basic skills – literacy and math. • More than ever, adult literacy and GED preparation need to be at the center of public policy for the large population of out of school youth.
