Majority of Americans will be ‘minorities’ by 2045: White population falls below 50% for first time in history, according to analysis of census data

The majority of Americans will not be white by 2045, according to data highlighting the US’s increasingly diverse population.

An analysis of census data by the Brookings Institution think tank estimates that white people will make up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population for the first time in history in just over two decades.

The majority of the population will consist of ethnic minorities: 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 13.1 percent for Blacks, 7.9 percent for Asians, and 3.8 percent for multiracial populations.

Immigration and an increase in interracial couples are fueling the shift into a new era of the so-called majority-minority population.

The white population will see a long-term decline until 2060, a result of more deaths than births

The white population is growing among older Americans as the predominantly white baby boomer generation ages.

But the proportion of whites in the population shrinks with younger generations, making Gen Z the last generation to be predominantly white.

Racial minorities make up more than half of Americans ages zero to 17.

Of that majority-minority population, Latino or Hispanic people make up the largest share at just over 25 percent.

Brookings researcher William Frey, who conducted the analysis using 2020 census data, said that the growing population of racial minorities, especially Latino and Asian Americans,aging and now declining white population’ among young people and those in the labor force.

The latest census data shows that the elderly population has risen to nearly 56 million, up from 40 million a decade earlier.

At the same time, in 2020 there was an overall decline in the number of children under 18 in the US population of about one million, which experts attributed to overall declining birth rates.

The baby boom population is about three-quarters white, which meant the white population was the oldest of any racial group according to the 2020 census.

Yet only the white non-Hispanic population makes up the majority of the total U.S. population at about 58 percent. Notably, this was a decrease from about 64 percent in 2010.

The shrinking white population with age can be explained both by higher levels of immigration when people are in their prime working age, and by an influx of immigrant women of childbearing age.

Non-white people drove the largest population growth in the generations that followed the baby boomers, or people born in the mid-1940s through the 1960s, and dramatically increased birth rates in the post-World War II years. USA.

The age group 65 and older is growing faster than any other, and is the only age group whose white population is projected to grow between now and 2045 and beyond, according to analyzes from the Brookings Institution.

By 2060, according to the census, whites will make up only 36 percent of the under-18 population, while Hispanics will make up 32 percent.

Changing demographic patterns in the US have led to a “racial generation gap” in which the younger population, impacted by immigration in recent decades, is much more diverse than older generations.

Changing tides in the demographic makeup of the US have become a cultural lightning rod in the US and Western cultures more broadly, sparking heated debates about a nation’s identity, social norms and political representation.

By 2060, the nation’s seniors will still be more than half white, even though whites will make up only 36 percent of the population under the age of 18, according to the census

White Americans make up 57.8 percent of the country, according to data released Thursday, a decline of more than 6 percent since 2010. That’s the number of people who answered “only white, non-Hispanic or Latino” on the survey. Another group that just answered “white only” covers 61 percent of the country, according to a data map.

In 2018, foreign-born adults made up nearly 66 percent of the U.S. labor force compared to a lower rate of 62 percent for U.S.-born adults, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.