Counties with Hispanic households in poverty in 2000

Usually, when we have these top-ten lists, we look at the percentages, since regardless of the indicator, raw numbers often just give us the most populous areas. The most populous counties, for instance, are Los Angeles, CA; Cook (Chicago), IL; Harris (Houston), TX; Maricopa (Phoenix), AZ; etc., and when these show up as the top ten, we don’t think it’s very interesting. With that said, when looking at Hispanic households living in poverty, some details in the raw count caught my eye.

The usual suspects are there. Unsurprisingly, Los Angeles County ranks first in this category, and Harris, TX; Bronx, NY; Miami-Dade, FL; Cook, IL; and Maricopa, AZ are large cities where large numbers of impoverished Hispanics are unfortunately expected. However, a few other counties at the top of the list were less expected. Hidalgo County, Texas, has 195,565 impoverished Hispanics (as of 2000). That’s only about 8,000 more than in Cook County, Illinois, but Cook County has over 4 million more residents. Hidalgo County sits in southern Texas and has no major cities.

Also notably on this list is San Juan Municipio in Puerto Rico. Though it’s the capital and largest city in Puerto Rico, it’s less populous than any other county in this list but has a comparable amount of poverty among Hispanics.

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