New Report on Linguistic Minorities

The UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LINGUISTIC MINORITY RESEARCH INSTITUTE has released a report titled “The Growth of the Linguistic Minority Population in the U.S. and California, 1980-2005.”  According to the report, linguistic minorities represent one of the largest segments of the school-age population in the United States and in California. According to data from the U.S. Census, there were 10.5 million children, age 5-17, living in the United States in 2005 who spoke a language other than English, representing 20 percent of the school-age population (Figure 1). In California, 3.9 million school-age children spoke a language other than English at home, more than 44 percent of the population. Overall, while California is home to 13 percent of all school-age children, it is home to 29 percent of all school-age linguistic minority children in the U.S. Over the last 25 years, the linguistic minority population has exploded relative to the English-only population, both in California and in the rest of the U.S. In California, the linguistic minority population increased 187 percent, while the English-only population increased by only 8 percent. In the U.S. overall, the linguistic minority population increased by 130 percent, while the English-only population actually declined by 1.3 percent. This means that over the last 25 years virtually all of the 5 million additional school age children in the United States were linguistic minorities!  Click here to see the data.

KJ