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Today's American Teen

by Linda Lyons

The ingredients in America's vast melting pot continue to change, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the halls of the nation's high schools. The most dramatic recent demographic development in the 13- to 17-year-old age group is that the number of Hispanic teens is about to surpass the number of black teens. The 2000 Census reports there are roughly 3 million teens in each category living in the United States today; in the mid-to-late 1980's, when today's teen-agers were born, black births still far outnumbered Hispanic births. While that pattern has now reversed itself -- in 2000, Hispanic births outnumbered black births by 158,000 -- it's clear that a large percentage of today's Hispanic teens moved to the United States from other countries.

It's particularly important to understand the status of minority teens, given their ongoing lag behind white students with regard to academic achievement (see "Bridging the Minority Achievement Gap" in Related Items). Aggregated demographic data from Gallup Youth Surveys conducted in 2000 and 2001* give us a broad view of today's teen and afford a closer look at those minorities, whose representation in national polls is typically too small to permit reliable projections. The racial and ethnic breakdown in the combined polls is 63% non-Hispanic white, 15% Hispanic origin, 14% non-Hispanic black and 8% other race or ethnicity.

Overall, 52% of American high school teens describe a white-collar job as the type of work the main wage earner in their immediate family does, and 38% report a job that is considered blue collar. Both Hispanic teens and black teens are considerably less likely to name a white-collar job, 42% and 35% respectively, while 58% of non-Hispanic white teens do so.

Academic Assessment

Asked to assess where they stand academically, 59% of teens overall say "above average," while 40% say "average" or "below average." An examination of those responses reveals that 57% of black teens say their academic performance is above average, but Hispanics are somewhat less likely than non-Hispanic white teens to characterize their academic standing as such, 61% versus 51%. Their perception that they fall short on the academic scale may provide an important clue to the dramatic rise in the Hispanic dropout rate. According to the 2000 Census, 34% of high school dropouts are Hispanic, up from 22% in 1990.

Religious Indicators

On the whole, the Protestant and Catholic split is consistent between the adult and teen populations -- 48% of adults and 51% of teens give Protestant as their religious preference versus 26% of adults and 27% of teens who say Catholic.

The data show that black teens and black adults are above the national norms in their church-going behavior. Forty-three percent of black adults report that they attend church on a weekly basis, compared to 32% of the overall adult population. Fifty-two percent of black teens report having attended church in the last seven days, slightly higher than the 48% of all teens.

Hispanic adults are more likely to attend church regularly than the overall population, but Hispanic teens' reported rates of attendance are below the national norm for teens.

Political Indicators

Many teens look forward to voting for the first time. When asked about future party affiliation, 29% of all teens lean toward the Republican Party, 27% say they plan to align with the Democratic Party, and 24% say they will be political independents. Aggregated poll results from May through October 2002** reveal that 32% of adult Americans identify as Democrats, 33% as Republicans and 33% as independent.

Nearly the same percentage of white teens and adults identify as Republicans, but more adult whites identify as independents than do white teens. A third of Hispanic adults say they are independents, while only a quarter of Hispanic teens believe they will be political independents. More black teens identify as Republicans than adults of the same race or ethnicity and fewer Hispanic teens and black teens identify as Democrats than adults of the same group.

Key Points

At the beginning of the 21st century, teen-age demographics portray a rich blend. The biggest change in the last decade is the rise of the Hispanic teen population -- reflecting the rise in the general population. By the year 2010, people of Hispanic origin are projected to surpass blacks to become the second-largest ethnic group in America, 13.8% to 13.5%. In his new book, American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America, Leon E. Wynter gives us an ideal description of the wonderful melting pot that is America -- "This book begins with, and my arguments and insights ultimately rest on, one premise and guiding belief about this country: We have always been, and will ever be of one race -- human -- and of one culture -- American."

*Aggregated data from six Gallup Youth Surveys with 2,957 teens, aged 13 to 17, conducted by telephone interviews in 2000 and 2001.

Note: Interviews with self-described Hispanic teens were conducted in English. The survey-based conclusions therefore, do not represent the views or demographics of the non-English speaking teen population.

**Aggregated data from telephone interviews of 6,039 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May through October 2002. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1%.


Gallup https://news.gallup.com/poll/7081/Todays-American-Teen.aspx
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