Iowa seeing greater ethnic diversity throughout state

By Ed Tibbetts | Thursday, August 07, 2008

The growth in the number of Hispanics living in Iowa has been evident for years, but new government estimates say that since 2000 there’s also been sharp growth in the number of areas where Hispanics have expanded their footprint.

In 15 counties last year, Hispanics made up more than 5 percent of the population, nearly double what it was in 2000. In seven counties, more than one in 10 people claimed Hispanic ethnicity. In only three counties was that the case eight years ago.

The change, demographers and advocates say, is because of the relative youth of Hispanics in the state, the exodus of child-bearing white Iowans and a next generation of Hispanics who stay in the state but not always in the same communities as their parents who moved to Iowa to work in meat-packing plants.

The state’s Hispanic population grew to 119,734 last year, up from 82,473 in 2000. That’s about 4 percent of Iowa’s population, just a bit higher than the 2.8 percent that it was eight years ago.

But where the influence of Hispanics is most evident is in the pockets of Iowa where their share of the overall population is noticeable and growing. The new data show that the number of those pockets is growing.

n In Wapello County in southern Iowa, 6.8 percent of the population is Hispanic.

n In far northwest Iowa, 5.2 percent of Sioux County’s population is Hispanic.

n In Crawford County, in western Iowa, Hispanics make up 18.8 percent of the population, according to the new estimates.

n In each of those cases, the Hispanic share of the population has doubled since 2000.

“We’re finally starting to see some substantial numbers ... in terms of overall diversity of the state,” said Liesl Eathington, an assistant scientist at Iowa State University who tracks demographic trends.

The new figures are being released today by the U.S. Census Bureau and estimate the racial and ethnic composition of the country’s 3,000-plus counties.

Mark Grey, program director at the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration at the University of Northern Iowa, said the change is being driven by a few things. The fertility rate among Hispanic women is higher, and young white Iowans are moving out of the state right when they’re about ready to start families.

And Grey said the median age of a Hispanic Iowan is 14 years less than a white Iowan. “That’s significant,” he said.

Armando Villareal, administrator of the state’s Division of Latino Affairs, said the widening number of counties with significant Hispanic populations also is a result of the children of first-generation families moving away from home.

“They move out but still stay close to where family ties are,” he said.

In the Quad-Cities, the number of Hispanics is growing. But it’s less noticeable than in many other parts of Iowa because Hispanic influence in the Quad-Cities has been evident for a long time.

In Scott County, the number of Hispanics grew from 6,445 in 2000 to 7,681 last year, according to the estimates. That’s 4.7 percent of the overall population, just a bit higher than it was eight years ago.

In Rock Island County, 15,043 Hispanics lived here last year, up from 12,791 eight years ago. Hispanics make up about 10 percent of the population in Rock Island County.

The largest Hispanic influence in the Quad-City region is in Muscatine and Louisa counties, where they make up 13.6 and 15.8 percent of the population, respectively.

In some parts of Iowa, where the white population is shrinking, Hispanics are supplying all the growth.

“In a lot of areas of the state, this is really it in terms of population growth,” Eathington said.

Hispanics, while already outnumbering the state’s black population, also are expanding their share of the population in metro areas where blacks have been the dominant minority group for years.

In Polk County, for example, there are more Hispanics than blacks, according to the data. Blacks continue to outnumber Hispanics in Black Hawk and Scott counties.

Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com. Comment on this article at qctimes.com.