Document Type
Research Report
Publication Date
1-1-2013
Abstract
This report provides a descriptive snapshot of selected economic, social, educational, and demographic indicators pertaining to Latinos in New Bedford and surrounding towns. It reflects a commitment by UMass Boston’s Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy to provide periodic updates on the growing Latino population in Massachusetts.
The report on the New Bedford area is part of a larger series that covers fourteen other cities, or clusters of cities, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Each report analyzes data from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Data are analyzed by Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA), which consists of a minimum population of 100,000 and is the smallest geographic area publically available for individual-level analysis. In the PUMA for these cities, New Bedford accounted for 53.3% of the overall population in the 2010 Census. The great majority of the PUMA’s Latino population (92.5%) lived in New Bedford. Thus, the Latino population in these cities will be referenced as New Bedford throughout this report, although the data referenced does include smaller Latino populations in other cities in the area.
Since ACS data is collected from a sample of the population, there is some variation associated with each population estimate. In the bar graphs in this report, the ‘I’ that accompanies each bar represents the confidence interval for that estimate; we expect that another sample would generate an estimate within this interval 95% of the time.
In this report, Latinos are compared to non-Latino whites, non-Latino blacks, and Asians for selected demographic, economic, and social characteristics. The number of ethno-racial groups included in a particular analysis may vary; each ethnoracial group is included in the analysis only when the observed sample size is large enough to produce reliable population estimates.
The New Bedford area is home to an estimated 15,208 Latinos, who make up 8.6% of the cities’ population. Whites constitute the largest ethno-racial group in the area (81.0%), while blacks account for 3.5% and Asians 0.9% of the population. The New Bedford area has a sizeable Other Race category, composed mainly of individuals with Cape Verdean ancestry.
Recommended Citation
Granberry, Phillip; Rustan, Sarah; and Karp, Faye, "Latinos in Massachusetts Selected Areas: New Bedford" (2013). Gastón Institute Publications. 173.
https://scholarworks.umb.edu/gaston_pubs/173