The Latino population is growing, and we can look to nuestros niños as the force behind those numbers.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, today released a report that finds that Hispanics now make up more than one-in-five of all children in the United States – up from 9% in 1980 — and as their numbers have grown, their demographic profile has changed.

More than half of the nation’s 16 million Hispanic children are now “second generation,” meaning they are the U.S.-born sons or daughters of at least one foreign-born parent, typically someone who came to this country in the immigration wave from Mexico, Central America and South America that began around 1980. In 1980, a majority of Latino children were “third or higher generation” — the U.S.-born sons or daughters of U.S.-born parents.

Different generations of Latino children experience life in the U.S. in different ways.

First and second generation Latino children are less likely than third or higher generation children to be fluent in English and to have parents who completed high school. They are more likely to live in poverty. But they are less likely than third or higher generation Latino children to live in single parent households.

Another characteristic that separates Latino children along generational lines is their legal status. Building on earlier research, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that fewer than one-in-ten of all Hispanic children are unauthorized immigrants. However, about one quarter have one or more parents who is an unauthorized immigrant.

You can read the entire report here.