Census: Diversity to reign by 2042
by Multiple Authors on Aug. 14, 2008, under Nation/World, SpecialThe number of minorities in the United States is growing so briskly that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority status in 2042, years before demographers had previously projected, according to Census data released today.
The population is surging on almost all fronts, the new figures show. There will be 400 million people in the U.S. in 31 years, up from fewer than 305 million now.
The swelling numbers will transform Americans’ standard of living from the environment to public schools, demographers and public policy experts say.
“It affects quality of life in very important ways,” says Mark Mather, who studies U.S. demographic trends for the Population Reference Bureau, a research group in Washington. “We’re already experiencing that in traffic congestion, in schools and in our crowded coastal areas.”
Dramatic growth in the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, especially Hispanics, has propelled the increase. Annual immigration this year is about 1 million and is projected to double by 2050.
Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, says the earlier projections were low because they underestimated immigration.
“We’ve measured a much higher immigration in the ’90s,” he says. “In this decade, those high levels continued.”
Census projections in 2000 forecast that minorities in the nation would become a majority in 2059, 17 years later than previously forecast. The latest figures show that in 2050, non-Hispanic whites will have fallen to 46 percent of the population.
The proportion of children under 18 who are minorities will be even higher: 62 percent, up from 44 percent today. Two in every five children will be Hispanic, and two in five will be non-Hispanic white.
Other projections:
• The Hispanic population will nearly triple, from 46.7 million to 132.8 million in 2050, which would increase its share of the population from 15 percent to 30 percent. Blacks will increase from 14 percent to 15 percent, Asians from 5 percent to 9 percent.
• In 2050, one in five U.S. residents will be at least 65. The group over 85 is expected to more than triple from 5.4 million to 19 million.
By Emily Bazar, Paul Overberg
