Latinos in Massachusetts: Colombians

The Gastón Institute’s 2020 Latinos in Massachusetts series focuses on the ten largest Latino populations located throughout the state. In order of size, these Latino populations are Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Brazilians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Colombians, Cubans, Hondurans, and Ecuadorans. This report analyzes Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Our descriptive analysis uses both household- and individual-level data to estimate population size and percentages and to compare Colombians to Other Latinos and Non-Latinos in the state. Massachusetts was home in 2017 to 918,565 Latinos, of whom 42,488, or approximately 5%, were Colombian. Massachusetts has the sixth largest Colombian population in the United States (after Florida, New York, New Jersey, California, and Texas). Appendix A maps the Colombians in the United States, while Appendix B maps the Colombians by cities and towns in Massachusetts. Boston had the largest Colombian population in 2017 followed by Revere, Lowell, Worchester, and Chelsea. (These five cities between them had 50% of the Colombian population in the state.) Figure 1 shows that the population grew by 77% from 2008 to 2017, while the state’s overall Latino population grew by 44% during this period. By comparison, the state’s total population grew by 5.6% from in this same period