FOR RELEASE SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Latino Children in Poverty

A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center explores and analyzes the poverty rate for Hispanic children. Latino children now outnumber white children in poverty for the first time, according to census data cited in the report.

BY D’Vera Cohn

FOR MEDIA OR OTHER INQUIRIES:

Communications Department
202.419.4372
www.pewresearch.org

RECOMMENDED CITATION

Pew Research Center, September 2011, "Latino Children in Poverty"

About Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It does not take policy positions. The Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research and other data-driven research. It studies politics and policy; news habits and media; the internet and technology; religion; race and ethnicity; international affairs; social, demographic and economic trends; science; research methodology and data science; and immigration and migration. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder.

© Pew Research Center 2026

Table of contents

Latino Children in Poverty

A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center explores and analyzes the poverty rate for Hispanic children. Latino children now outnumber white children in poverty for the first time, according to census data cited in the report.

For the first time, Latinos are the single largest group of poor children, outnumbering whites, according to census data analyzed in a new Pew Hispanic Center report on Hispanic childhood poverty. In 2010, 37.3% of poor children were Latino, 30.5% were white and 26.6% were black. Most of the 6.1 million poor Hispanic children have parents who are immigrants. Among the Latino groups with the highest poverty rates are children of single mothers (57.3% poor), children of parents with a high school education or less (48.3%) and children of unemployed parents (43.5%).