Thread: Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.

Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: May 17, 2012

WASHINGTON — After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.

Such a turn has been long expected but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.

While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Signs that the country is evolving this way start with the Oval Office, and have swept hundreds of counties in recent years, with 348 in which whites are no longer in the majority. That number doubles when it comes to the toddler population, Mr. Frey said. Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, and have slipped below half in many major metro areas, including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis.

A more diverse young population forms the basis of a generational divide with the country’s elderly, a group that is largely white and grew up in a world that was too.

The contrast raises important policy questions. The United States has a spotty record educating minority youth; will older Americans balk at paying to educate a younger generation that looks less like themselves? And while the increasingly diverse young population is a potential engine of growth, will it become a burden if it is not properly educated?

“The question is, how do we reimagine the social contract when the generations don’t look like one another?” said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration studies at New York University.

The trend toward greater minority births has been building for years, the result of the large wave of immigration here over the past three decades. Hispanics make up the majority of immigrants, and they tend to be younger — and to have more children — than non-Hispanic whites. (Of the total births in the year that ended last July, about 26 percent were Hispanic, about 15 percent black, and about 4 percent Asian.)

Whites still represent the single largest share of all births, at 49.6 percent, and are an overwhelming majority in the population as a whole, at 63.4 percent. But they are aging, causing a tectonic shift in American demographics. The median age for non-Hispanic whites is 42 — meaning the bulk of women are moving out of their prime childbearing years.

Latinos, on the other hand, are squarely within their peak fertility, with a median age of 27, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. Between 2000 and 2010, there were more Hispanic births in the United States than there were arriving Hispanic immigrants, he said.

The result is striking: Minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010, Mr. Frey calculated, a surge that has created a very different looking America from the one of the 1950s, when the TV characters Ozzie and Harriet were a national archetype.

The change is playing out across states with large differences in ethnic and racial makeup between the elderly and the young. Some of the largest gaps are in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California, states that have had flare-ups over immigration, school textbooks and priorities in spending. The nonrural county with the largest gap is Yuma County, Ariz., where just 18 percent of people under 20 are white, compared with 73 percent of people over 65, Mr. Frey said.

Perhaps the most urgent aspect of the change is education. A college degree has become the most important building block of success in today’s economy, but blacks and Latinos lag far behind whites in getting one. According to Mr. Frey, just 13 percent of Hispanics and 18 percent of blacks have a college degree, compared with 31 percent of whites.

Those stark statistics are made more troubling by the fact that young Americans will soon be faced with caring for the bulging population of baby boomers as they age into retirement, said William O’Hare, a senior consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, on top of inheriting trillions of dollars of government debt.

“The forces coming together here are very clear, but I don’t see our political leaders putting them together in any coherent way,” he said, adding that educating young minorities was of critical importance to the future of the country and the economy.

Immigrants took several generations to assimilate through education in the last large wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century, Mr. Suarez-Orozco said, but mobility was less dependent on education then, and Americans today cannot afford to wait, as they struggle to compete with countries like China.

“This is a polite knock on the door to tell us to get ready,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “We do a pretty lousy job of educating the younger generation of minorities. Basically, we are not ready for this.”

But there are bright spots. Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said the immigration debate of recent years has raised the political consciousness of young Latinos and he is hopeful that more will become politically active as a result. Only half of eligible Latino voters cast ballots in 2008, he said, compared with 65 percent of eligible non-Hispanic voters. “We have an opportunity here with this current generation,” Mr. Vargas said. About 50,000 Latinos turn 18 every month, he said.

And the fact that the country is getting a burst of births from nonwhites is a huge advantage, argues Dowell Myers, professor of policy, planning and demography at the University of Southern California. European societies with low levels of immigration now have young populations that are too small to support larger aging ones, exacerbating problems with the economy.

“If the U.S. depended on white births alone, we’d be dead,” Mr. Myers said. “Without the contributions from all these other groups, we would become too top-heavy with old people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us...n-us.html?_r=1

Census: Minorities now surpass whites in US births

The Associated Press
Thursday, May 17, 2012 - 1:01 am

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time, racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half the children born in the U.S., capping decades of heady immigration growth that is now slowing.

New 2011 census estimates highlight sweeping changes in the nation's racial makeup and the prolonged impact of a weak economy, which is now resulting in fewer Hispanics entering the U.S.

"This is an important landmark," said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University. "This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders."

The report comes as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of Arizona's strict immigration law, with many states weighing similar get-tough measures.

"We remain in a dangerous period where those appealing to anti-immigration elements are fueling a divisiveness and hostility that might take decades to overcome," Harrison said.

As a whole, the nation's minority population continues to rise, following a higher-than-expected Hispanic count in the 2010 census. Minorities increased 1.9 percent to 114.1 million, or 36.6 percent of the total U.S. population, lifted by prior waves of immigration that brought in young families and boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years.

But a recent slowdown in the growth of the Hispanic and Asian populations is shifting notions on when the tipping point in U.S. diversity will come — the time when non-Hispanic whites become a minority. After 2010 census results suggested a crossover as early as 2040, demographers now believe the pivotal moment may be pushed back several years when new projections are released in December.

The annual growth rates for Hispanics and Asians fell sharply last year to just over 2 percent, roughly half the rates in 2000 and the lowest in more than a decade. The black growth rate stayed flat at 1 percent.

The immigrants staying put in the U.S. for now include Narcisa Marcelino, 34, a single mother who lives with her two daughters, ages 10 and 5, in Martinsburg, W.Va. After crossing into the U.S. from Mexico in 2000, she followed her brother to the eastern part of the state just outside the Baltimore-Washington region. The Martinsburg area is known for hiring hundreds of migrants annually to work in fruit orchards. Its Hispanic growth climbed from 14 percent to 18 percent between 2000 and 2005 before shrinking last year to 3.3 percent, still above the national average.

Marcelino says she sells food from her home to make ends meet for her family and continues to hope that one day she will get a hearing with immigration officials to stay legally in the U.S. She aspires to open a restaurant and is learning English at a community college so she can help other Spanish-language speakers.

If she is eventually deported, "it wouldn't be that tragic," Marcelino said. "But because the children have been born here, this is their country. And there are more opportunities for them here."

Of the 30 large metropolitan areas showing the fastest Hispanic growth in the previous decade, all showed slower growth in 2011 than in the peak Hispanic growth years of 2005-2006, when the construction boom attracted new migrants to low-wage work. They include Lakeland, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; Provo, Utah; Las Vegas; and Phoenix. All but two — Fort Myers, Fla., and Dallas-Fort Worth — also grew more slowly last year than in 2010, hurt by the jobs slump.

Pointing to a longer-term decline in immigration, demographers believe the Hispanic population boom may have peaked.

"The Latino population is very young, which means they will continue to have a lot of births relative to the general population," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau. "But we're seeing a slowdown that is likely the result of multiple factors: declining Latina birth rates combined with lower immigration levels. If both of these trends continue, they will lead to big changes down the road."

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the census data, noted that government debates over immigration enforcement may now be less pressing, given slowing growth. "The current congressional and Supreme Court interest in reducing immigration — and the concerns especially about low-skilled and undocumented Hispanic immigration — represent issues that could well be behind us," he said.

Minorities made up roughly 2.02 million, or 50.4 percent of U.S. births in the 12-month period ending July 2011. That compares with 37 percent in 1990.

In all, 348 of the nation's 3,143 counties, or 1 in 9, have minority populations across all age groups that total more than 50 percent. In a sign of future U.S. race and ethnic change, the number of counties reaching the tipping point increases to more than 690, or nearly 1 in 4, when looking only at the under age 5 population.

The counties in transition include Maricopa (Phoenix), Ariz.; King (Seattle), Wash.; Travis (Austin), Texas; and Palm Beach, Fla., where recent Hispanic births are driving the increased diversity among children. Also high on the list are suburban counties such as Fairfax, Va., just outside the nation's capital, and Westchester, N.Y., near New York City, where more open spaces are a draw for young families who are increasingly minority.

According to the latest data, the percentage growth of Hispanics slowed from 4.2 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent last year. Their population growth would have been even lower if it weren't for their relatively high fertility rates — seven births for every death. The median age of U.S. Hispanics is 27.6 years.

Births actually have been declining for both whites and minorities as many women postponed having children during the economic slump. But the drop since 2008 has been larger for whites, who have a median age of 42. The number of white births fell by 11.4 percent, compared with 3.2 percent for minorities, according to Kenneth Johnson, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire.

Asian population increases also slowed, from 4.5 percent in 2001 to about 2.2 percent. Hispanics and Asians still are the two fastest-growing minority groups, making up about 16.7 percent and 4.8 percent of the U.S. population, respectively.

Blacks, who comprise about 12.3 percent of the population, have increased at a rate of about 1 percent each year. Whites have increased very little in recent years.

Other findings:

—The migration of black Americans back to the South is slowing. New destinations in the South, including Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh, N.C., and Orlando, Fla., saw sharp drop-offs in black population growth as the prolonged housing bust kept African-Americans locked in place in traditional big cities. Metro areas including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco had reduced declines or gains.

—Nine U.S. counties in five states saw their minority populations across all age groups surpass 50 percent last year. They were Sutter and Yolo in California; Quitman in Georgia; Cumberland in New Jersey; Colfax in New Mexico; and Lynn, Mitchell, Schleicher and Swisher in Texas.

—Maverick County, Texas, had the largest share of minorities at 96.8 percent, followed by Webb County, Texas, and Wade Hampton, Alaska, both at 96 percent.

—Four states — Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas — as well as the District of Columbia have minority populations that exceed 50 percent.

The census estimates used local records of births and deaths, tax records of people moving within the U.S., and census statistics on immigrants. The figures for "white" refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.

___

Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, W.Va., contributed to this report.

Census: Minorities now surpass whites in US births - News-Sentinel.com

So whites become a minority in America due to unprecedented illegal immigration and unwanted hyper legal immigration? All of the illegal alien invasion supporting groups will be crowing about this news. Their animosity towards whites is on clear display and will only intensify as more illegals flow into the country and the American government continues paying them to have children while American citizens are thrown out of their homes because they can't make ends meet.

W

Anybody born 1970 and before will likely tell you that this country has only gone down hill since then...increased crime, loss of our language borders and culture, a totally dumbed down society, loss of our freedoms and rights, more and more on the welfare rolls, schools gone to hell in a hand basket, jails FULL to the brim with illegals and gang members, sky high taxes and continuing to skyrocket...I could go on and on.

Whites, especially elderly whites, have been pushed by the wayside in favor of illegals who are treated better than our veterans.

Someone please tell me how allowing this many people here from every third world cess pool in the world has improved our standard of living. Tell me how "terrible" it was back when whites were the majority- Our schools were top notch, we actually HAD a manufacturing base that kicked ass and if you wanted a job, it might not have been the best pay, but they were out there and not hard to get. Now a college grad can't even get a job at McDonald's! So many other things, I don't have time to get in to it right now.

So many of us can feel this country slipping away between our fingers and don't know what to do or feel they no longer have a voice. During the last few years, for the first time ever, I actually ENVY people who are older than me and feel sorry for those younger than me.

If all Americans had chosen this path, that would be one thing to accept.

But the full knowledge that this has been thrust upon Americans by design by those that wish to overthrow the will of the majority of Americans is a matter of treason.

W

Here's the first propaganda piece to address the matter.

Explaining Why Minority Births Now Outnumber White Births

pewsocialtrends.org
by Jeffrey Passel, Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn
Released: May 17, 2012




The nation’s racial and ethnic minority groups—especially Hispanics—are growing more rapidly than the non-Hispanic white population, fueled by both immigration and births. This trend has been taking place for decades, and one result is the Census Bureau’s announcement today that non-Hispanic whites now account for a minority of births in the U.S. for the first time.

The bureau reported that minorities—defined as anyone who is not a single-race non-Hispanic white—made up 50.4% of the nation’s population younger than age 1 on July 1, 2011. Members of minority groups account for 49.7% of children younger than age 5, the bureau said, and for 36.6% of the total population. The findings are included in the bureau’s first set of national population estimates since the 2010 Census, when 49.5% of babies under age 1 were minorities.

Hispanics are more than a quarter of the nation’s youngest residents, according to the new population estimates, accounting for 26.3% of the population younger than age 1. Among other major non-Hispanic groups, the share for whites is 49.6%; for blacks, 13.7%; and for Asians 4.4%.


The long-term result of these changes among younger age groups is that non-Hispanic whites are projected to become a minority of the population (47%) by 2050, according to Pew Research Center population projections. (Census Bureau projections say the change will occur in 2042). Hispanics, already the nation’s largest minority group, are projected to continue to account for most population growth by that year.

Population Patterns


Underlying these changes is the rapid growth of minority groups compared with non-Hispanic whites. Results from the 2010 Census showed that racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 91.7% of the nation’s growth since 2000. Most of that increase from 2000 to 2010—56%—was due to Hispanics. Non-Hispanic whites, though still a majority of the nation’s population, accounted for only 8.3% of its growth over the decade.


Minorities accounted for 93.3% of the nation’s population growth from April 1, 2010 (Census day) to July 1, 2011, according to Census Bureau data released today. Of the total population growth of 2.8 million during that period, the total increase for non-Hispanic whites was only 192,000.


Another important part of the explanation for changing birth patterns is that minority populations are younger than whites, so are more likely to be having and raising children. There are notable differences by race and ethnic group in median age, the age at which half a group is younger and half older. The national median age in 2011 was 37.3.


Non-Hispanic whites have the oldest median age, 42.3, in 2011, according to the population estimates. Hispanics have the youngest, 27.6. Non-Hispanic blacks (32.9) and non-Hispanic Asians (35.9) also are younger than whites.


Related to their younger age profiles, racial and ethnic minority groups also include a higher share of women in the prime child-bearing ages of 20-34. Fully a quarter (25%) of the nation’s Hispanic women are in this age group, according to the population estimates, compared with fewer than one-in-five non-Hispanic whites (19%). For non-Hispanic blacks and Asians, the share is 22%.

Fertility

The changing profile of the nation’s youngest residents also stems from the fact that some groups, especially Hispanics, have higher numbers of children than do non-Hispanic whites. One illustration of this difference is in the “total fertility rate,” or the number of children the average woman is predicted to have in her lifetime, based on current age-specific birth rates. For the U.S. as a whole, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of American Community Survey data, the number is 2.0. (American Community Survey data in this posting come from a Pew Research Center analysis of the 1% sample of the 2010 ACS Integrated Public Use Microdata Series [IPUMS])


Among Hispanics, the total fertility rate is 2.4. For non-Hispanic whites and for non-Hispanic Asians, it is 1.8. Non-Hispanic blacks (2.1) have higher fertility than whites but lower fertility than Hispanics.


Immigration is an important contributor to higher birth rates among Hispanics, because foreign-born women tend to have more children on average than U.S.-born women. Most growth in the Hispanic population from 2000 to 2010 was due to births, not immigration, a change from the long-time pattern. But most births to Hispanic women are to those born outside the U.S.

Interracial Relationships

Social change, not just demographic change, also is driving recent birth rate trends. A rising number of multiracial babies is being born to couples that include one white parent.


Rising rates of intermarriage explain some of the trend. Among newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites married someone who was Hispanic or of another race. That was nearly triple the rate in 1980. In a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, 29% of whites said they have an immediate family member or close relative married to someone of a different race; this compares with 50% of nonwhites who said the same.

Survey data indicate that the public increasingly accepts and approves of intermarriage and interracial dating.

Census Bureau Methodology


The Census Bureau estimates released today are not the nation’s official birth numbers, which come from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The latest final NCHS birth data that is available is for 2009. As the Census Bureau explains in its estimates methodology, it calculated the share of births for the nation’s race and ethnic groups based on 2009 data from the NCHS, along with some more current data from individual states.


Because there are differences in the race categories used by the NCHS and Census Bureau, the Census Bureau adjusted the NCHS data to be consistent with its own categories. The bureau calculated origin-specific birth rates for 2009 using its own population estimates for that year, then applied them to the estimated 2011 adult population to obtain its results.

Demographics of Motherhood


Although the Census Bureau report does not provide data on demographic characteristics of mothers, a Pew Research Center report based on other data shows that there are marked differences in age, education and marital status among mothers of different racial and ethnic groups.


Among black and Hispanic mothers, births peak among women in their early 20s. For white and Asian mothers, births peak among women in their late 20s and early 30s. Looking at educational attainment differences among groups, most white and Asian mothers are college educated, while most Hispanic and black mothers are not.


In 2009, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 41% of births were to unmarried mothers, but the shares varied for different groups: 53% for Hispanics, 29% for non-Hispanic whites and 73% for non-Hispanic blacks.



Explaining Why Minority Births Now Outnumber White Births | Pew Social & Demographic Trends

Third World Country, with gated communities for the few Whites, who will have to live in secured everything, because of the rampant Brazilian like crime waves.

Illegal aliens are able to have as many children as they wish, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. American citizens are responsible for providing for their own children and cannot afford this luxury, thus the demographic shift in our country continues unabated.

In 2009, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 41% of births were to unmarried mothers, but the shares varied for different groups: 53% for Hispanics, 29% for non-Hispanic whites and 73% for non-Hispanic blacks.

This one paragraph speaks volumes to me. I wonder how many of these unwed mothers have gainful employment that will sustain independence? This statistic alone signals the moral and cultural breakdown occurring in this country. We've allowed a cradle to grave entitlement society to flourish. We've allowed certain ethnic groups to undermine the purpose and dignity that comes along with 'being' American. We are sorely lacking in National pride, strong moral and family values, the 'can-do' spirit that comes from a strong work ethic, and most of all, the overall belief in Divine Providence. Where do we go from here? Where will these 'new' offspring lead us in the future?

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

If all Americans had chosen this path, that would be one thing to accept.

But the full knowledge that this has been thrust upon Americans by design by those that wish to overthrow the will of the majority of Americans is a matter of treason.

W

Yes, we have that darling, drunken, loudmouthed, lard ass, Teddy K to thank for this. Hope he's burning in HELL right now.