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For the first time in history, America's under-18 population is expected to be majority people of color. Furthermore, the population of white Americans is expected to decline for the first time in the history of the US Census.
‘’Twenty years ago if you told people this was going to be the case, they wouldn’t have believed you,’’ William Frey of the Brookings Institution told the Boston Globe.
‘’The country is changing dramatically.’’
For many, America's changing demographics are not much of a news story. For nearly a decade, the US Census Bureau’s annual updates of the 2010 Census have shown a decrease in the nation's white population and an increase in the number of people of color living in America.
"Over the decade’s first nine years, racial and ethnic minorities accounted for all of the nation’s population growth, and were responsible for population gains in many states, metropolitan areas, and counties that would have otherwise registered losses due to declines in their white populations," Frey added.
"And while the U.S. and more than half of its states have shown absolute declines in populations under age 25, such declines were largely due to white losses among the youth population. These declines would have been even greater were it not for youthful gains among racial and ethnic minorities, especially the Latino or Hispanic population."
Geographically, census data is expected to show a trend of Black Americans moving from inner cities to suburbs. Moreover, recent updates of the data have shown that Black Americans have shifted away from Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Chicago to more southern cities in an effort to live in warmer climates while reconnecting with family.
“African Americans went to the North for economic opportunity, to get away from Jim Crow,” National Urban League President Marc Morial said.
“People are returning to where family is, to places that are on an economic upswing.”
Also, experts expect immigrants to move from large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Houston to the midwest for a more affordable way of living.
With that said, domestic migration is expected to slow to its lowest point since World War II. From March 2019 to March 2020, less than 10% of Americans moved, lower than any year since 1947.
“The minority population is starting to resemble the non-Hispanic white population in terms of where they live and in terms of their age distribution,” Steven Martin of the Urban Institute explained.
“As an aging and stabilizing population, we’re seeing less movement than we had in the past.”
While the data that has been presented is historic in nature, many remain skeptical. Specifically, experts worry that the US Census Bureau did not accurately count Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous communities.
“I fear an undercount of people of color because of the way the census was conducted,” Morial said.
“It was politicized from the very beginning by the Trump administration, notwithstanding the valiant efforts by the Census Bureau to push back on that politicization.”
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