Minority buying power expected to rise

Minority buying power in five years will triple what it was in 1990, indicating continuing major economic strides among blacks and Hispanics, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.

Overall buying power, which is defined as the total post-tax, personal income of residents that is available to spend on goods and services, will jump 148 percent for the period 1990-2008, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

Hispanic buying power, however, will jump 357 percent, while that of blacks will increase 189 percent from 1990 to 2008, the study says, continuing the upward mobility of minorities in the United States.

“It doesn’t appear that these trends are going to stop,” said Jeffrey M. Humphreys, director of the Selig Center. “The only way the Hispanic buying power could diverge from these projections would be a clamp down on immigration. But it would still grow faster than other groups because of the youth of that group.”

Between 1990 and 2008, the Hispanic population will increase 137 percent, compared with a 24.8 percent gain for the total population, Mr. Humphreys said.

At 885 percent, North Carolina leads in the projected growth of Hispanic buying power between 1990 and 2008, trailed by Arkansas (859 percent) and Georgia (661 percent).

The businesses that blossom in the Hispanic communities around the country, especially in states where new immigrants are settling, are smaller and often overlooked, said J.R. Gonzales, an Austin, Texas, business owner and chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

“These businesses are just doing it,” Mr. Gonzales said. “These are people who are supporting their families and sending their kids to college, but they are not running huge corporations.”

More and more Hispanic-owned businesses, though, are growing larger, which is how the group’s buying power continues to increase, Mr. Gonzales said.

“A Hispanic-owned business tends to employ more Hispanics, and as the work force grows, more of those workers move into better jobs, companies employ more people and pay better wages,” Mr. Gonzales said.

The Selig Center report uses figures for five minority categories: black, Asian, American Indian, multiracial and other. Hispanics’ numbers are reported separately, because they could be listed as white or minority.

Whites this year showed a 14 percent increase in buying power from 2000. For minorities, the increase was 22 percent, the report says.

The study’s span so far includes two minor recessions, in 1990-1991 and 2001. But it also takes in the 1990s period of unprecedented economic prosperity.

The growth of both black and Hispanic buying power is predicted to outpace that of whites, which is projected to be 128 percent.

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