A shift in population

By Harold Reutter
harold.reutter@theindependent.com

Published: Sunday, October 16, 2011 11:46 PM CDT

A projection of Hall County’s population in the year 2040 predicts the county will be majority Hispanic.

Woods & Poole Economics’ total projected population for Hall County is 67,667, which would be an increase of nearly 15.5 percent during the three decades.

That would be much slower growth than recent years, when Hall County’s population grew by 9.5 percent in just one decade.

A more interesting prediction is how that population will grow by ethnic group. Woods & Poole predicts Hall County’s Hispanic population will be more than 35,300 people, which would be 52 percent of the county. Whites would be just more than 28,615 residents, or 42 percent.

Thirty years from now, blacks, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans are projected to be 5.5 percent of Hall County’s population.

Projecting population 30 years into the future is a dicey proposition. Those projections depend on a number of assumptions. One of the most important assumptions is that the JBS Swift & Co. plant will still be operating in 2040. Swift, Grand Island’s largest employer, has attracted immigrant families from all over the world.

Yet, if the particulars are in dispute, the general trend may be less subject to debate.

Hall, Adams and Buffalo counties are all predicted to have higher population numbers than their official population from the 2010 census.

That would continue a trend, because Hall, Adams and Buffalo counties all had higher populations in the 2010 census than they did 30 years before.

Merrick, Loup, Garfield, Wheeler, Custer, Valley, Greeley, Sherman, Boone, Nance and Polk counties are all projected to have lower populations in 2040. That’s also part of a 30-year trend on each side of the 2010 census.

Hall County is projected to be a plurality county by 2035, with no one ethnic group exceeding 50 percent. In that year, Hall County is expected to have 65,962 residents, with 49 percent of the total composed of white residents and nearly 46 percent composed of Hispanic residents.

When black residents, Native American and Asian residents are added to Hispanic residents, Woods & Poole projects that Hall County will be majority minority in 2035, with 51 percent of the county’s residents among those ethnic groups.

The city school district is already in that position, according to preliminary 2011-12 enrollment figures from the Grand Island Public Schools.

White students account for nearly 47 percent of Grand Island’s preschool through 12th-grade enrollment. Hispanic students are about 46 percent.

When Hispanic, American Indian, Asian, black or African-American, Pacific Islander and students of two or more races are added together, so-called ethnic minorities make up 53 percent of Grand Island’s total enrollment for 2011-12.

GIPS enrollment makes up about 15 percent of Hall County’s total population.

The school enrollment picture changes when all school enrollment in Hall County is counted, but it still shows a very diverse student body. According to the Nebraska Department of Education, Hall County had 12,014 students at the end of the 2010-11 school year.

Of that total, 57 percent was white and 43 percent was various ethnic groups, with Hispanics being the single largest so-called ethnic minority at just under 40 percent. All school enrollment, both public and private in Hall County, is about 20 percent of the county’s population.

That broader countywide look is likely why Woods & Poole is not predicting a majority minority status for Hall County until 2035 or 2040.

Adding weight to the argument that Hall County and Grand Island might one day be majority minority is the fact that both the county and the city would have lost population between the 1990 and 2000 censuses if it had not been for the influx of Hispanic residents.

That exact same pattern repeated itself between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

Woods & Poole is also projecting other Nebraska counties will be majority minority by 2040. It says Douglas, Dawson, Thurston and Dakota counties will all have more than 50 percent of their residents composed of various so-called ethnic minority groups. Saline County is predicted to have a population of more than 40 percent ethnic minority residents by 2040.

The state is projected to remain a majority white state in 2040.

Whites are projected to be 68 percent of the state’s population in 2040. Hispanics are projected to be the next largest ethnic group at 22 percent. When all other ethnic groups are added to Hispanics, the total of ethnic minorities in Nebraska will be 32 percent.

The United States will be closer to Hall County’s experience than Nebraska’s, according to Woods & Poole. By 2040, it is projecting that the United States will be 52 percent white, with all other so-called ethnic minorities combined constituting 48 percent of the nation’s population.

http://theindependent.com/articles/2011 ... 379073.txt