LATINO NEIGHBORHOODS AND LATINO NEIGHBORHOOD POVERTY

In this article, I use 1980 and 1990 US census tracts that were 50% or more Latino to present a socioeconomic portrait of Latino neighborhoo ds and to investigate the determinants of poverty and the factors behi nd the poverty increase of Latinos in these neighborhoods. Results sho w that Latinos in Latino tracts rank worse than US Latinos on virtuall y all socioeconomic measures. Recent immigrants raise Latino neighborh ood poverty, while long-term immigrants reduce it. The 1979 to 1989 in crease in poverty in Latino neighborhoods can be explained better by c hanges in the payoffs of the characteristics that affect poverty than by changes in the value of these characteristics. Changes in the indus trial composition of employment had a relatively large poverty-increas ing effect.