The Latino GDP Project seeks to provide a factual view of the large and rapidly growing economic contribution of Latinos living in the United States.
The effort to calculate the Latino GDP began with David Hayes-Bautista around 2004. Hayes-Bautista’s idea was to use established government data programs to calculate a robust summary statistic for the economic performance of U.S. Latinos. The original U.S. Latino GDP algorithm was developed by Hayes-Bautista with Werner Schink, former Chief Economist of the California EDD. They produced the inaugural Latino Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Report in 2017, partially funded by the Latino Donor Collaborative. After Schink’s untimely passing in 2018, Hayes-Bautista found new collaborators in Dan Hamilton and Matthew Fienup, of California Lutheran University. Hayes-Bautista, UCLA colleague Paul Hsu, Hamilton, and Fienup made refinements to the Latino GDP methodology and have produced annual U.S. Latino GDP Reports every year since 2019.
With generous support from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, the Latino GDP Project was significantly expanded beginning in 2021 and now includes calculation of the Latino GDP for targeted states and major metropolitan areas.
The Latino GDP research has been presented to tens of thousands of individuals in more than a dozen states, including to the Joint Economic Committee of U.S. Congress, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and ¡Adelante!, a system-wide Hispanic Heritage Month Event of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Latino GDP research has been the subject of more than 100 separate features across print, electronic and broadcast media.