Quote:
Originally Posted by jluke65780
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There's a few problems with the data;
1) Hispanics aren't separated out in the initial statistics. Some of the Hispanic buying power was added in with the Whites, Blacks, Asian, Multiracial, etc. and is only calculated in terms of "Hispanic" and "Non-Hispanic" Then again, this is a US census problem in general
2) If you guys read the report, here's how they got these statistics to begin with:
http://www.terry.uga.edu/selig/docs/buying_power_2008.pdf(Page (broken link) 11)
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In general, the estimation process has two parts: estimating disposable personal income and allocating that estimate by race or ethnicity based on both population estimates and variances in per capita income
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Basically, they took the proportion of the state's population that is of a certain group and multiplied it by per capita income of each group. The problem with this is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis doesn't keep very good record in what the per capita income of each racial group is. In other words, a lot of this is plain out guesswork.
However, what would be MORE interesting is to see how much each of these groups make up the total buying power of the state. Interestingly enough, unlike most other Western countries, Americans generally have more disposable income to spend in the economy. What this means is that the collective consumer buying power of a state and even the US is around 70-80% of the total money of the United States. I'm sure this has changed with the economy being in the condition that it is, but it looks like American Exceptionalism at its finest.
Anyways, here's what the proportional outlook looks like:
United States (2008) (Page 14)
Total Population: 304,707,703
White (w/ Hispanic): 79.7%
Hispanic: 15.3%
Black: 12.9%
Asian: 4.8%
Market size: $10,721,000,000,000
White (w/ Hispanic): 85.2%
Hispanic: 8.9%
Black: 8.5%
Asian: 4.7%
American Indian: 0.6%
Multiracial: 0.9%
As you can see, Whites clearly are overrepresented in terms of how much disposable income they have in the US as a whole by 6%. Asians as a whole are proportionate to their share of population (but are still SLIGHTLY underrepresented by 2.9%), while Blacks are 35.2% underrepresented in buying power and Hispanics are 41.9% underrepresented in their buying power! I'm sure if White Non-Hispanics had their own statistics, their difference would be even higher.
(Page 29)
*Bold (% of total state share/% of state population as of 2008 American community survey)
White (
w/ Hispanic):
1-California : $1,124 billion (
81.7%/ 60.9%)
2-Texas : $737 billion (
86.5%/71.4%)
3-New York : $654 billion
(81.5%/66.7%)
4-Illinois : $402 billion (
85.1%/71.4%)
5-Pennsylvania : $394 billion (
89.5%/83.8%)
Black:
1-New York : $88 billion
(10.9%/15.6%)
2-Texas : $72 billion
(8.4%/11.5%)
3-Florida : $63 billion
(9.6%/15.3%)
4-Georgia : $62 billion
(21.1%/29.7%)
5-California : $61 billion
(4.5%/6.2%)
Asian
1-California : $163 billion
(11.8%/12.3%)
2-New York :$ 51 billion
(6.4%/6.9%)
3-Texas : $33 billion
(3.8%/3.4%)
4-New Jersey : $31 billion
(8.3%/7.5%)
5-Illinois : $22 billion
(4.7%/4.3%)
Hispanic
1-California : 249 billion
(18.1%/36.1%)
2-Texas : 171 billion
(20.9%/35.9%)
3-Florida : 101 billion
(15.4%/20.5%)
4-New York : 75 billion
(9.4%/16.4%)
5-Illinois : 40 billion
(8.7%/14.9%)
The only minority groups that are overrepreseented in their buying power than in their share of the total population are Asians in Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois (and even so, not by much).
However, this statistic is also telling:
Percentage change of buying power from 1990-2008 by group (Page 25)
United States: 151.0%
Hispanic: 348.9%
Asian: 337.1%
Black: 187.0%
White: 139.4%
Hispanics and Asians, reflecting both groups primarily immigrant character, are increasing their income at more than 2x the rate of the total population. For Hispanics, being the poorest group of the whole, this means that a whole lot of them are entering the middle class (which is a good thing
). For Asians, this means that more and more of them (and me, I guess) are becoming a primarily upper-middle class group.
We'll see how this recession affects that!
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