The Changing Face of Texas: Population Projections and Implications


D'Ann Petersen and Laila Assanie

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

October 2005

Rich natural resources, abundant land, a central location within the United States and a business-friendly environment have long attracted both immigrants and U.S. natives to Texas. As a result, the state’s population is faster growing, younger and more diverse than the nation’s.

These rapid demographic changes present challenges for the future. As the state’s baby boomer population ages, more demands will be placed on housing, health care and social services. Hispanics, already a dominant force in Texas, are expected to become the majority population group by 2020. The significant increase in this population (both immigrant and native) has far-reaching implications for education, housing and the labor force. The key issue facing Texas will be to reduce the economic and educational disparities prevalent among the state’s ethnic groups as the population continues to grow and evolve.

This article looks at population growth and demographic changes of recent decades. Then, with projections from the Texas State Data Center, we examine some sectors of the economy that will be challenged by these demographic forces in the coming decades.

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Does Texas' Future Add Up?

The state struggles with an education crisis, income inequality and a growing generation gap.

by Melissa del Bosque | Texas Observer
9 Dec 2010

If state leaders don’t change course now, they’ll face a host of problems later: lower wages, a greater need for social services and a decline in the quality of living for Texans.

Read it here...

Texas would lose $15 billion in federal funds if it opted out of Medicaid, study finds

By Dave Montgomery
Friday, Dec. 03, 2010

AUSTIN - State policymakers were warned Friday that Texas would face the loss of $15 billion in federal matching funds and would see an additional 2.6 million residents added to the ranks of the uninsured if the state opted out of the federal Medicaid program.

The findings by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission are designed to guide legislators as they examine the rising cost of Medicaid while grappling with a state budget shortfall that could exceed $20 billion.

Gov. Rick Perry and leading conservative lawmakers have suggested that Texas could fashion a less expensive and more efficient state-run healthcare program by freeing itself from burdensome Medicaid requirements.

But Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, who sponsored a 2009 law that required the agency's study, said the potential downsides outlined in the report essentially rule out withdrawal from Medicaid. He said the state should concentrate on trying to press for changes in federal policy to improve the Medicaid program and give Texas a bigger proportional share of Medicaid funds.

"I don't think [opting out] of Medicaid is really viable," said the Houston-area physician. "If you dropped out today, the human and economic consequences are pretty immediate."

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Legal Experts Question Willie Nelson Pot Bust

Texas personality (and perennial gubernatorial candidate) Kinky Friedman also believes agents overstepped their boundaries. "The real crime here is that it occurred in a county that is one of the headquarters of the Zetas," he says, referring to the growing Mexican criminal drug cartel. "These guys don't have bigger fish to fry? The Zetas are taking over their county and they're busting Willie Nelson. That shows a real lack of priorities.""

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Tom DeLay found guilty on money laundering, faces from five years to life in prison

Austin American-Statesman
24 Nov 2010
DeLay was found guilty of conspiring to launder $190,000 of corporate contributions through the Republican National Committee to seven candidates for the Texas House. This wasn't just a state issue, however. DeLay had sought GOP control of the Texas legislature in order to redraw the Congressional district map to the GOP's advantage. When Republicans took control of the state legislature, they redrew the congressional district map under DeLay's direction, leading to a net gain of 12 seats in the U.S. House for the GOP in the 2004 elections.

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Tea Party members to Texas Hispanic Congressmen: 'Why don’t you go back to Mexico?'

by Lefty Coaster | Daily Kos
Nov 09, 2010

A group of Tea Party activists in Washington D.C. recently told two Hispanic Texas border congressmen to "Go back to Mexico" as they were on their way to vote on the House floor.

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Most-Pesticide-Laden Fruits and Veggies List Under Attack

By Kiera Butler | Nov. 8, 2010

You know the Environmental Working Group's super-helpful list of the most-pesticide-laden fruits and veggies? Well, there's a Big Ag lobby group called the Alliance for Food and Farming that's trying to debunk it. And the USDA just gave the lobbyists $180,000 to aid their smear campaign, The Atlantic reports.

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Texas GOP leaders want to secede from Medicare, Social Security

by Susan Gardner | Daily Kos
8 Nov 2010

Ah, the smell of Texas Tea Talk early in the morning. If at once you don't secede, try, try again. Only this time, it's one crazy-ass brand of very selective secession, it appears. Somehow I doubt the state really wants to rid itself of say, the Border Patrol, or the right to be protected by the Defense Department, or all the federal dollars going into the Houston Space Center.

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Election reactions: Can the GOP fix what’s broken?

Jane Madden | 3 Nov 2010

"So, many in this country decided Tuesday that the Democrats had plenty of time to undo the damage caused by the Republicans over eight long years. They have said that 21 months should have been plenty of time to restore the economy, get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and put everyone back to work. Well then, I now give the Republicans in the U.S. House 21 months to undo the damages they initially caused themselves.

"In a way, it is nice. Let them use their own methods to get us out of the messes they created. If, by October 2012, we are not all employed, living comfortably, have restored the deficit to where Bill Clinton left it in 2000, and are completely out of all wars in the Middle East, then I challenge those same voters to undo the damage they have done this week and put the Democrats back into office. Twenty-one months. That is all they get. Good luck, may the force be with them, and God help us all."

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Thank you Supreme Court for all the sleazy attack ads

By Dan Morain | The Sacramento Bee
2 Nov 2010

Campaign 2010 is noteworthy for many things: the influence of tea partiers; dismay at President Barack Obama and incumbents; fear about our nation's future. But most remarkable has been the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision issued at the start of the year that opened wide the spigots of corporate money flooding into this year's election.

The 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission handed Republican strategists something they long sought, the ability to raise unlimited money from corporations.

Worse, the high court decision permits many of the organizations to forever hide the identities of their funders, while other groups easily can delay identifying their donors until after votes are cast.


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NPR: Private Prisons behind Arizona's Immigration Law

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.
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NV-Sen: Angle says Social Security part of America's "wicked ways"

by Jed Lewison | dailykos.com
27 Oct 2010

Just when you thought she couldn't get any weirder, Sharron Angle delivers the crazy:

After months and months of insisting that she really doesn't oppose Social Security -- despite her past statements about wanting to phase it out -- now a tape has surfaced of Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle decrying the program as an example of society's "wicked ways." And this was just two and a half weeks ago.

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Barack Obama: The oligarchs' president

BY CHARLES FERGUSON
Salon.com | 27 Oct 2010

When Barack Obama was elected, he had an unprecedented opportunity to shape American history by bringing the country's new financial oligarchy under control. Elected on a platform of change and renewal by a nation in crisis and with strong majorities in both houses of Congress, his election celebrated throughout the world, Obama could have done great things. Instead, he gave us more of the same. America will be paying for his decision for a very long time.

The first troubling sign was his personnel appointments: Larry Summers, the man behind nearly every disastrous policy that created the crisis, fresh from making $20 million from hedge funds and investment banks while at Harvard, to become the director of the National Economic Council; Tim Geithner, plucked from the New York Federal Reserve Bank and put in charge at Treasury; as Geithner's chief of staff, Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist; to succeed Geithner at the New York Fed, William C. Dudley, who was chief economist of Goldman Sachs during the housing bubble years; Michael Froman, straight from Citigroup Alternative Investments, which lost billions while its executives became rich, to coordinate economic policy for the National Security Council; Jacob Lew, who was the CFO of Citigroup Alternative Investments, as deputy secretary of state (and now, Obama's nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget); Gary Gensler, a former Goldman executive who helped ban the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives, to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives; Mary Shapiro, former head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency, the investment banking industry’s self-policing body, to run the Securities and Exchange Commission; reappointing Ben Bernanke. And on and on.

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American Manufacturing Moves Fashion Forward

Posted by jeckert 25 Oct 2010
americanmanufacturing.org

The Hill's Congress Blog recently featured a piece on the Garment District where, despite it's posh Manhattan locale, the decline of manufacturing can be seen more clearly than in some midwestern factory towns. Co-written by American fashion designer Nanette Lepore and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), the post points out that the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs affects the fashion industry, too...and in a big way. 175,000 people work in the New York fashion industry with 24,000 in apparel manufacturing. Both natives of Northeastern Ohio's Mahoning Valley, Lepore and Ryan fear that New York's Garment District might be met with the same fate as their hometown:

"A microcosm of other domestic manufacturing industries, New York's fashion industry has seen many apparel manufacturers shut their doors as subsidized foreign goods and rising costs drove them out of business as production shifted offshore."

The Garment District is a prime example of quality manufacturing that comes with U.S. manufacturing. Every Friday, we run a "Fashion Friday" blog piece highlighting a clothing or accessory company that manufactures their goods in America. These products represent high-quality, and better yet, good, sustainable American jobs.

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Trickle-Down 2010

THINGS REPUBLICANS HATE

The Complete Guide to Conservative Hatred.

The Original Reagan Democrat

Aside from the sheer pleasure derived from hearing right-winger’s heads exploding all over America, this archived radio broadcast of a liberal Democrat by the name of Ronald Reagan campaigning for President Truman, as well as soon-to-be liberal lion Hubert H. Humphrey, presents an important lesson to Democrats everywhere.

In the radio address, the Gipper is:

- For wage growth

- For Social Security

- For union and fair employment practices

- For school lunch programs

- Against tax cuts for the wealthy

- Against excessive corporate profits

And the money quote? “High prices have not been caused by higher wages.”

Wow, there you go again, Ronnie.

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Death In The Gulf

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George W. Bush's accomplishments as president

* Attacked and took over two countries.
* Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
* Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
* Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
* Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

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Non-Fox Nation

With a sustained 24/7 propaganda effort, Fox failed to stop the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress. They failed to stop the 2008 election of Barack Obama despite incessant and false allegations of him being a Muslim, a radical leftist, and a pal of terrorists. They failed to stop the 2010 passage of a health care bill despite charges of socialism, death panels, and national bankruptcy. Does this sound like a network that holds a commanding majority of America's television viewers under its sway?