Manhattan's Hispanic Population Shrinks Despite Growth in City, Census Shows
March 28, 2011 7:06am
Manhattan's Hispanic population shrank more than 3 percent, even as Hispanics outpaced the white population citywide.
The Hispanic population in Manhattan decreased 3.4 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to new census data. (Flickr/Kevin Coles)
By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Manhattan’s Latino population has shrunk over the past decade, while the outer boroughs and metro-area experienced a steady gain in Hispanic residents, census data shows.
The Hispanic population in Manhattan decreased 3.4 percent — dropping from 417,816 to 403,577 residents throughout the borough, according to the new Census data released last week.
The decrease in the Hispanic population in Manhattan bucks the trend seen throughout the metropolitan area, where non-Hispanic whites are now in the minority. Whereas non-Hispanic whites accounted for 54.3 percent of the area’s population in the 2000 Census, they now account for 49.6 percent, according to the 2010 count.
And in neighborhoods where Hispanics have long made up the majority, such as Washington Heights and Inwood, the population showed a 10 – 19 percent decrease throughout Northern Manhattan, while the non-Hispanic white population grew 9 – 13 percent in the same areas.
The 2010 census also showed a decline in the general population of Upper Manhattan.
Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge said the shift was of little surprise and reflected a slowdown in overall Hispanic migration to the U.S. and New York City since 1997.
In addition, economics may play a large factor in the Hispanic decrease in Manhattan, reflecting the higher cost of living on the island, he said.
"Housing prices are really high and the Hispanic population tends to be less affluent," he said. "Manhattan is becoming a province for the middle class, the upper middle class and on up."
As wealth from lower Manhattan has spread north, Beveridge said, the migration has served as an incentive for non-Hispanic white residents to move to relatively more affordable locations in Upper Manhattan in order to be close to the wealth.
"Even areas like East Harlem that used to be considered down in the dumps are becoming more fashionable," he said, adding that Columbia University’s expansion north has served as a further incentive for non-Hispanic families to increasingly move to Upper Manhattan.
But Beveridge said downtown families couldn’t account for the shift in demographics alone, and points to the possibility of undocumented Hispanics not participating in the census while living in Manhattan as a possibility for the dwindling numbers.
Claudio Iván Remeseira, director of the Hispanic New York Project at Columbia University's Center for American Studies, said although the census indicates a shrinking Hispanic population, strong signs of a thriving and growing Hispanic culture still emerge throughout Manhattan.
Near his home in West Harlem, college-age students have increasingly moved to the area over the past several years as have young, middle class white families looking for relatively inexpensive larger apartments.
But alongside that surge are the increasing number of Mexican immigrants joining the Dominican residents who have called the area home since the 1980s.
The result, he said, is visible in the tamales sold from street carts and restaurants on nearly every block and Mexican botanicas selling religious icons and spiritual cleansers on Broadway. Where once barbershops in the neighborhood were the cornerstone of Dominican male culture, flags from Mexico and the Dominican Republic now hang side-by-side.
"There is certainly a gentrification in process," he said, "but there is also an interesting shift in culture, not just the pure and simple expulsion of the older population."
By Carla Zanoni, DNAinfo.com
Follow Carla on Twitter @carlazanoni
Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/20110328/manhattan/manhattans-hispanic-population-shrinks-despite-growth-city-census-shows#ixzz1HvuQpDS4
In a report issued today, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute rank the nation's counties on various measures of health. As expected, the findings reveal deep health disparities among counties across the U.S., including those in New York state. Whether counties are ranked by "health outcomes" (rates of illness and death) or by "health factors" (characteristics that influence health), counties with large minority populations and high rates of poverty consistently rank least healthy. Among New York City's five counties (boroughs), Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island land relatively high among New York's 62 counties, while Brooklyn and the Bronx fall at or near the bottom.
