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Cicely C. Mitchell — A recent study has labeled Houston, the nation’s 4th largest city, as the most diverse city in the United States of America.
Houston has surpassed the likes of Los Angeles and New York and is being labeled as having the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the the U.S.; the new report comes from Rice University.
The report, from the university’s Kinder Institute of Urban Research and the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas, gathered census data from 1990, 2000 and 2010.
The percentage of Latinos in the region increased dramatically from one fifth of the population (20.8 percent) in 1990 to more than one third (35.5 percent) in 2010. The Latino population, according to the study, follows closely behind the proportion of Anglos.
Given this data, Latinos are now the second largest ethic group in the metropolitan area. If the growth of the population continues at its current rate, Latinos will eventually surpass Anglos.
Michael Emerson is co-author and co-director the Kinder Institute and attributed the region’s increased diversity to a 1965 shift in immigration laws.
The substantial and thriving suburbs in the Houston metropolitan area,Texas City — Pearland and Missouri City — are seen as the most diverse in the region. The areas are also more statistically less segregated than Houston.
The report, “Houston Region Grows More Ethnically Diverse, With Small Declines in Segregation,” labels Houston as a city that has two of the largest race/ethnic groups, Latinos and Anglos, are nearly equal, according to the report.
