ABSTRACT
Latinos began to be considered an important minority group when census figures showed a huge increase in the population. To be sure, they also saw jobs vanish, but two factors in particular tend to distinguish Latino from black communities: continual immigration and a historically lower level of housing discrimination. Texas border communities have long been the poorest in the nation, and their largely Mexican American populations have suffered even more from economic downturns. Most discussions of changes in poverty assume either a constant governmental role or a shrinking national welfare state, but there is evidence to contradict such a simple view. However, since most Latinos are located outside the Rustbelt, analyses of their poverty needed to take into account the diverse forms that economic restructuring has taken in different parts of the United States. The growth of an informal economy is part and parcel of late twentieth-century economic restructuring.
