As the state’s fastest-growing demographic group, Hispanics also are the fastest-growing market for Arizona businesses.
A new report sheds light on how fast that growth may be in coming years.
DATOS: Tucson, released last week by the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, forecasts that Hispanics will account for $40 billion of Arizona’s consumer spending during 2012. That figure will rise to $50 billion by 2015, the report said.
While focused primarily on Pima County, the report points to statewide figures and trends on the Hispanic market’s growth.
“It’s not a prophecy; it’s about mathematics,” said Loui Olivas, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business who led the research.
Hispanics account for about 30 percent of Arizona’s population at present and have a fertility rate almost twice that of white non-Hispanics.
“When a corporation or company is looking to see who is spending more, it’s the Hispanic market,” said Olivas, who also is vice president of education partnerships at ASU.
That market is younger and has more people per household. The median age of Hispanics in Arizona is 25.8 as opposed to 45.1 for non-white Hispanics, Olivas said.
And Hispanics as a group have larger families, the report found. Sixty-nine percent of Latinas, for example, live in households with four or more people, compared to 32 percent among non-Hispanics.
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