MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US census: ethnic economic gaps persist

Blacks and Hispanics still have substantially lower incomes than white US citizens and are more likely to fall below the poverty line, according to data from the US Census Bureau released on yesterday.

Median household US income is US$46,242, compared with US$50,622 for whites, US$36,278 for Hispanics and US$30,940 for blacks, based on 2005 data, the bureau said.

Household income was just one of a number of measures showing disparities between ethnic groups in the annual government survey.

White US citizens earned more and were more likely to own their own homes, hold a graduate or professional degree and work in management than blacks or Hispanics.

The survey did not provide interpretations to accompany its data but it could spark renewed debate over immigration, welfare, education and labor policy.

In terms of disparities between blacks and whites, the survey exposes a continuing economic gap 40 years after the civil rights movement helped remove segregation and separate education in the south and end racial barriers to voting.

Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank said the survey failed to take into account factors that provoked apparent economic disparities across racial lines such as differences in family structure, education and work.

"If you compare blacks to whites who have the same family structure and amount of participation in the work force and academic skill the racial disparity disappears," said Rector, a senior research fellow at the foundation.

Rector and other conservatives have called for fresh initiatives to promote marriage, among other things, arguing that unmarried mothers are disproportionately likely to be below the poverty line.

Some 13.3 percent of US citizens were below the official poverty line, calculated as having an annual income around US$10,000 for a single person or US$20,000 for a family of four.

Poverty rates stood at 9 percent among whites, 22.4 percent among Hispanics and 25.5 percent among blacks. In households headed by a female, the average poverty rate was 29.4 percent.

The survey said 53 percent of US citizens born outside of the United States were born in Latin America.

This latest American Community Survey follows a decade of pilot studies and responds to an increasing demand for data, not least from business and educational groups, said Roberto Ramírez of the bureau's ethnicity and ancestry branch.

Three million households across the United States were polled for the survey, which is released in the form of over 1,000 tables, he said.

Ramírez said it was difficult to say whether economic disparities between groups were rising or shrinking but gaps remained "persistent".