For U.S. Children, Minorities Will Be The Majority By 2020, Census Says

BILL CHAPPELL

NPR

March 4, 2015

America is heading toward the day when whites will no longer make up the majority of the population. And U.S. children will get there soon, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report. The agency also says the overall U.S. population will grow older — and grow more slowly — in coming years.

By around 2020, "more than half of the nation's children are expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group," the Census Bureau says, putting Americans under the age of 18 at the front of a trend that will see the overall population follow suit some 20 years later.

"When that shift for the U.S. as a whole takes place by 2044, the Census Bureau predicts no one racial or ethnic group will dominate the U.S. in terms of size," NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports. "Overall, the U.S. population is set to grow more slowly over the next few decades partly because of declining fertility rates. It's expected to hit 400 million by 2051."

The forecast lists several changes America will undergo in the next 45 years.

Another finding states that from 2014 to 2060, "the working-age population is projected to decrease from 62 percent to 57 percent of the total population."

Some more highlights from the Census Bureau:

• By 2030, 1 in 5 Americans is projected to be 65 and over.
• The minority population is projected to rise to 56 percent of the total in 2060, compared with 38 percent in 2014

• By 2060, the nation's foreign-born population will reach nearly 19 percent of the total population, up from 13 percent in 2014.

• The "two or more races" population is projected to be the fastest-growing over the next 46 years.

It's Official: The U.S. is Becoming a Minority-Majority Nation

By Noor Wazwaz 

July 6, 2015

Census data shows there are more minority children under age 5 than whites.

They may not know it, but for kids under the age of 5, the day the United States became a minority-majority nation has already arrived.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 there were more than 20 million children under 5 years old living in the U.S., and 50.2 percent of them were minorities.

Parents who identified their child as white with Hispanic origin were the largest minority, making up 22 percent of the 19.9 million children under age 5, followed by African American children, who make up 15 percent. 

Currently, the Census considers Hispanic not a race but an ethnic background. Hispanics can be of any race, and Hispanic origin is asked on Census forms in a question separate from the one about race.

But some say that the way the census counts who belongs to which racial group is flawed.

"The census suffers from binary thinking," Professor Richard Alba of City University of New York said in a phone interview. "Some people are both, majority and minority."

This is because the Census Bureau, not the respondent, decides into which racial category a person falls. If a child has a white parent and a black parent, or if the child's parents identify themselves as white but do not check the box for "not Hispanic or Latino," the child is categorized as a minority.

Still, the number of minority and mixed-race children in the U.S are only expected to rise. "More than half of the nation's children are expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group," by 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau reports, referring to all kids under the age of 18.

The minority population is expected to rise to 56 percent of the total population in 2060, compared with 38 percent last year. When that happens, "no group will have a majority share of the total and the United States will become a 'plurality' [nation] of racial and ethnic groups," the U.S. Census states. The minority-majority trend reflected among 5-year-olds is the beginning of that shift.

"We are a much more diverse country than we were," said Professor Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Groups in America are mixing more than we think."

"Current rates of immigration are high and intermarriage is increasing," Cherlin added in a phone interview.

A record 14.6 percent of all new marriages in the U.S. in 2008 were between people of two  different races or ethnicities, according to a social and demographics trends report by the Pew Research Center, and the children of these couples reflect America's changing demographics. Multiracial children of black-and-white descent were the largest group in 2014, according to Census data, making up 36 percent of the multiracial population under 18.

The "two or more races" population is projected to be the fastest-growing group over the next 46 years, with its population expected to triple in size. The Census breaks down the "two or more races" category as white combining with any other race, i.e. American Indian, Alaska native, Asian and black.