Posted on December 13, 2012

Non-Whites to Make Up Nearly 60 Percent of U.S. by 2060: Census

Susan Heavey, Yahoo! News, December 13, 2012

A surge in Hispanics and Asians is set to dramatically change the face of the United States over the next 50 years, with no one ethnic group the majority, according to U.S. figures that depict an aging nation with slower population growth.

By 2060, non-whites will make up 57 percent of the U.S. population, more than doubling from 116.2 million in 2012 to 241.3 million, according to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau released on Wednesday. Racial minorities are now 37 percent of the population, it said.

The shift will largely be fueled by minority births that continue to outpace those of whites, the agency said, based on data from the 2010 Census.

Nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Hispanic by 2060, up from one in six now, it said. The Asian population is also expected to more than double over the next five decades. {snip}

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The United States has been on a steady path to greater racial diversity, and experts have predicted for years that minorities would be the “majority” before 2050. The Census Bureau on Wednesday projected that would happen in 2043.

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Earlier this year, births of non-white U.S. babies for the first time reached more than 51 percent, a trend influenced by the rise in interracial marriages.

Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center said the Census findings signal the nation’s dramatic division into two main groups: the older white population and the increasingly diverse younger generations.

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Even as the white population declines, it will still make up the largest ethnic group, even though whites will no longer hold the majority. In 2060, there will be about 179 million whites compared, for example, to 128.8 million Hispanics, Census said.

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