What Year are Minorities Predicted to Be the Majority in the United States?

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The number of children born to minorities is expected to outpace the number of children born to whites this year for the first time ever, demographers estimate.

In fact, minorities already make up nearly half the children born in the United states. Demographers, individuals who study population growth and trends, says this is part of the trend that will make minorities the majority population in the U.S. in the next 40 years, or by 2050.


“Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America’s children, the future is now,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire who researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday.

The trend that is most responsible for the dramatic demographic shift in the country is the vastly growing number of immigrants into the U.S. This has boosted the number of Hispanic women in the middle of their prime childbearing years. As it stands today, minority children comprised 48 percent of all new births in 2008, the census estimates, compared with 37 percent just 20 years ago.


White women are waiting longer to have children and are having fewer children on average than their minority counterparts. Twenty years ago, demographers observed that white people were approaching zero population growth — meaning that for every person that dies, one person is born.

The birthrate for American ethnicities in 2008, the latest year statistics are available, breaks down like this:

Whites – 52 percent

Hispanics – 25 percent

African Americans – 15 percent

Asians – 4 percent

Multiracials – 4 percent

Currently, whites make up two-thirds of the American population. But as the country transforms into a true multicultural society, it will have serious political and economic ramifications. The changing demographics are sure to alter the political discussion in this country, ranging from immigration reform, education and health care to Social Security.

From an economic standpoint, the Census Bureau count will have drastic consequences in its once-in-a-decade head count. It will figure into the distribution of federal aid and lead to redrawing legislative boundaries with “racial and ethnic balances” as required by federal statutes. –terry shropshire

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