Posted on June 26, 2020

Change is Coming: Non-Whites and Hispanics Make Up Majority of U.S. Under-16 Population

Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, June 25, 2020

The number of Asian and Hispanic Americans is surging, but nobody is booming like the baby boomers.

The Census Bureau reported Thursday that the 65-and-older population grew in the past decade by a whopping 13.8 million people, or 34.2%, driving up the national median age from 37.2 years in 2010 to 38.4 years in 2019.

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Meanwhile, the young are becoming less numerous and less White. For the first time, non-Whites and Hispanics made up a majority of the under-16 population in 2019, fueled by falling White fertility rates and the rapid growth in the Asian and Hispanic communities.

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Leading the population growth in terms of race were Asian Americans, whose numbers soared by 29.3% in the past decade, an increase of 5.2 million, for 22.9 million in 2019.

The population of Hispanics (any race) hit 60.6 million after rising by 10 million, or 20%, in the same period. The number of Blacks increased by 11.6%, or 5 million, reaching 48.2 million in 2019.

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Meanwhile, Whites numbered 258.7 million after growing by just 4.3% in the past decade. The White fertility rate dropped to 1.666 births per 1,000 women in 2017, while the overall U.S. fertility rate wasn’t much higher at 1.765, according to figures released in January by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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William H. Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has projected that the United States will become non-majority White in 2045, with Whites dropping to 49.7% of the population, followed by 24.6% Hispanics, 13.1% Blacks, 7.9% Asians, and 3.8% multiracial.

“We are browning from bottom up in our age structure,” Mr. Frey told The Associated Press. {snip}