Hispanics in the U.S.: Breaking Down the Numbers

Geoff Gaudreault, NPR/Pew Hispanic Center projections based on U.S. Census data

Hispanics are expected to total 18 percent of the U.S. population by 2020.

Hispanics accounted for half of the 2.9 million U.S. population growth between 2003 and 2004, according to new data from the Census Bureau. The Hispanic population, which can include any race, jumped 3.6 percent in the year ended July 1, 2004 -- more than three times that of the total population, which grew 1.0 percent, and more than four times the 0.8 percent growth for whites.

The latest numbers put the Hispanic population in the U.S. at about 41.3 million, or about 14.1 percent of the total. One-in-five kids under the age of five is now Hispanic.

Robert Siegel talks with Jeffrey Passel, senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center, about the new census data.

In past years, Hispanic population growth has been due to immigration, but last year was the first in which Hispanic births outnumbered immigrants. Passel says that's due to a large population of Hispanic women in the their 20s and 30s. "Even moderately high levels of fertility translate into large numbers of births," he says.