More in my recent series on ‘having fun with numbers.’
The US Census Bureau released late last week the 2007 demographic numbers collected by the American Community Survey.* Here are some poverty figures from their press release:
Among people for whom poverty status is determined, about 51 percent of residents born in Somalia are living in poverty. About a quarter of the population born in Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Jordan and Mexico are also living in poverty.
On the low end of the poverty spectrum for the countries of birth, U.S. residents born in the Netherlands and Ireland each have a poverty rate of about 5 percent.
About 13 percent of both natives and the total U.S. population are living in poverty, while about 16 percent of the foreign-born are.
Additionally the Somalis are among the newest comers and have the youngest population.
Meanwhile, among the nation’s foreign-born, Somalis and Kenyans living in the United States are the most likely to be newcomers, and Somalis are among the youngest and poorest.
In fact, we reported earlier that more than half of the Somali Muslim refugees we have resettled in the US have come since 9/11.
You can get information on your community here.
* If you scout around at the American Community Survey, you can find even more information on your county. It took me awhile but I found it.
For readers who like to pore over statistics, see my posts yesterday here and here.