Senator Charles Schumer came to the CUNY Graduate Center on January 30 to help launch the Latino Data Project, which will track and study the nation’s dynamically growing Latino populations.

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Senator Schumer displays the Latino Data Project report.

A cooperative endeavor of two constituents of the Graduate Center—the Center for Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Urban Research—the Project’s long-term objective is to create an interactive website that will post and continually update a wide array of data on Latino populations in various formats.

Already at work for several months, the Latino Data Project used the official launch to present its first report, “The Latino Population and the Transforma-tion of New York.” This extensive statistical profile was derived from the microdata samples made public by the U.S. Census. These make possible far more detailed abstractions and in-depth comparative analyses of specific Latino populations than prior Census data.

Among the findings of the report are that 1.6 million Latinos migrated to the New York Consolidated Metropolitan Area between 1980 and 2000, and 44% of the Latinos in that area arrived after 1995. More than half, 56%, of the area’s Latinos were born outside of the U.S. The Mexican population here is 60% male, while the Puerto Rican population is 54% female. The report also revealed that 27% of New York City’s population is Latino.

In addition to much quantitative data, the Latino Data Project website will also include materials from the arts, literature, music, popular culture, the press, and scholarly journals