Getting to the bottom of Texas' Latino pay gap

Emily Kerr, Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

Southwest Economy, 2009, issue Q4, No 4, 3-7

Abstract: Among Latinos, the U.S. born make up a majority in Texas but a minority in the rest of the country. Because natives typically earn more than immigrants, a state with a large, established population of U.S.-born Latinos might be expected to have relatively high Latino wages. That's not the case in Texas. The Latino wage gap--the difference between the wages of Latinos and non-Hispanic whites--is significantly larger in Texas than in the rest of the nation. ; What drives the gap in Texas? To find out, we look at Latinos' recent contributions to the state's labor force and trends in their wages in the state and nation. Then we consider a host of factors that may be keeping Latino wages relatively low in our region. Key among these factors is education. Texas Latinos have fewer years of schooling than non-Hispanic whites in Texas and Latinos living in other parts of the U.S. This poses a critical challenge as the Texas economy moves forward--improving the educational attainment of an increasingly significant segment of its population.

Keywords: Education - Economic aspects; Hispanic Americans; Wages; Immigrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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