The minority class in the United States appears to be changing.

For the first time in the country’s history, “non-whites” and Hispanics make up a majority of U.S. residents under the age of 16, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Thursday. The data follows a trend that began in 2010, when deaths of white people began outnumbering their births, says William Frey of The Brookings Institution. From 2016 to 2019, the number of white people in the U.S. dropped by more than a half million, Census data reveals. At the current rate, white people will be a minority in the U.S., per the bureau.

“We are browning from bottom up in our age structure,” Frey says. “This is going to be a diversified century for the United States, and it’s beginning with this youngest generation.”

From NBCNEWS:

In 2019, a little under 40% of the total U.S. population was either nonwhite or Hispanic. Non-Hispanic whites are expected to be a minority of the U.S. population in about 25 years.

A natural decrease from the number of deaths exceeding births, plus a slowdown in immigration to the U.S., contributed to the population drop since 2010 for non-Hispanic whites, whose median age of 43.7 last year was by far the highest of any demographic group. If these numbers hold for the 2020 census being conducted right now, it will be the first time since the first decennial census in 1790 that there has been a national decline of whites, Frey said.

“It’s aging. Of course, we didn’t have a lot of immigration, that has gone down,” Frey said. “White fertility has gone down.”

Asians had the biggest growth rate of any demographic group while the number of Senior Citizens in the US. also took a big jump up. This information comes from the US Census Bureau based of 2019 numbers, and will be updated when the processing of the 2020 census is complete. Fill yours out please!

Susan Saunders 6/26/20