Latinos Are Like Population Penicillin

There’s a big chunk of America where more people are dying than being born, and you can put a stack of chips on the square that says that chunk has little or no Latinos.

The cool thing about the Census-if you’re a statistic,demography, bar chart wonk-is that it gives us really interesting ways to look at ourselves. For instance, the recent numbers tell us that 760 of the country’s  3,142 counties are dying. TheUnion.com puts the blame in very specific places:

Years in the making, the problem is spreading across the country amid a prolonged job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending.

The “spread” of the problem is as far as it is wide. Again the Union:

…stretching from industrial areas near Pittsburgh and Cleveland to the vineyards outside San Francisco to the rural areas of east Texas and the Great Plains. Once-booming housing areas, such as retirement communities in Florida, have not been immune.

Sounds like a virus, no? So let’s shamefully stretch the metaphor. The record for county deaths was set in 2002, when 985 counties, roughly one in three, were in the throws of…well, you know. Those places would have died, in the population/demographic sense, but

…increasing births and an influx of Hispanic immigration helped add to county populations during the housing boom.

We’re like population penicillin.

follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda