NEW YORK - The Hispanic market is predicted to reach a tipping point when the final numbers of the 2010 U.S. Census are released, Advertising Age reports. The census projects that the Hispanic population will reach 50 million, with one in six U.S. residents of Hispanic origins.

Those numbers represent a whopping 42 percent jump from the 2000 Census. Meanwhile, the non-Hispanic population has increased only 5 percent during the past 10 years.

This means that Hispanics have slid into second place in the consumer market behind white non-Hispanics, which still represent the biggest group at around 200 million. Also, Hispanics eat more family meals at home and don??t spend as much on liquor, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Hispanics in the United States are young and often reside in big, traditional, married-with-children families with grandparents closely involved. More than one in three Hispanics (34.3 percent) in America are kids under the age of 18, while less than one in four children (22.5 percent) are non-Hispanics.

All these facts translate into a market ripe for consumer goods and services, similar to the time period when the baby boomers were young in the 1950s. During the next 10 years, millions of bilingual Hispanic teenagers will move into adulthood, with their behaviors predicted to conform closer to other non-Hispanic young adults.

This population group will morph into a huge driver of U.S. consumer-spending during the next 10 years and beyond. As millions of baby boomers start retiring by 2015?"and thus lowering their consumer outlay?"Hispanics will step in to fill that hole in the consumer marketplace.