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January 24, 2005
Demography and Change.
Here's an interesting factoid from a New York Times article on the record numbers of immigrants in New York City
nearly 80 percent of Bangladeshi households are married-couple families, as are more than 6 in 10 Indian, Chinese, and Pakistani homes, compared with only 31 percent of native-born New Yorkers' households.You have to get past the jump to have a comparison of this "record number" to past numbers (which comparison makes this article better than many articles on "record gasoline prices" or "presidential inauguration expenses," which manage to neglect any adjustment for inflation
A century ago, when immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe poured through Ellis Island, the foreign-born made up more than 40 percent of the city's population - 80 percent when their American-born children were counted, too. But the city's total population was then only 4.7 million. At 36 percent of today's 8 million New Yorkers - up from a low of 18 percent in 1970 - the size of today's foreign-born population is a record, and taken together, foreign-born residents and their offspring account for more than 55 percent of the city's population. More than 43 percent of the foreign-born arrived after 1990, and 80 percent after 1980.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at January 24, 2005 10:25 AM