White Americans' majority to end by mid-century:
The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years -- to 2050 -- because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S. Census Bureau projections released Wednesday update last year's prediction that white children would become a minority in 2023 and the overall white population would follow in 2042. The earlier estimate did not take into account a drop in the number of people moving into the U.S. because of the economic crisis and the immigration policies imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The United States has 308 million people today; two-thirds are non-Hispanic whites.
First, the title is a little of a misnomer. In the 2000 Census 47% of Hispanics identified as whites (42% as "other," with the balance blacks, mixed, Asian, etc.).* But the reality is that under the American law for operational purposes (e.g., affirmative action) there's no distinction between white and non-white Hispanics (though socially no doubt white Hispanics experience life differently than Hispanics of black, indigenous or mixed origin). But the bigger point is the problems and sensitivities to initial conditions when it comes to straight line projections. You never know what's going to happen. I just read today in a book published this year that St. George's, Utah, will have a population of 450,000 in the year 2030! This is ridiculous. In any case, I took Census projections and plotted the one which posits a middling level of immigration.
A few things I noticed: 1) If you compare it to the other models of immigration, increased, reduced, and total closed borders, Asians rely on immigration to increase their number a great deal. The Asian American birthrate is low, so their proportion in 2050 would be lower than today. Hispanics benefit from immigration, but since their birthrate is high, the different models all show an increase. 2) Only in the no immigration model do blacks increase their proportion appreciably between now and 2050. I think this shows the weakness of the methods here, Africa's population is increasing a great deal, so it is likely that its contribution to the stream of immigration will increase in the future, while Asia and Latin America's will decrease (both because of population stabilization, and economic development). 3) Strangely, Hispanics are just counted as white by and large. Where is the "other" segment? So inclusive of Hispanic whites, all the models here predict that 3/4 of the American population will remain white. 4) Look at the lines. So clean. Worthy of the savants who predicted that the housing market would never drop.... * The Hispanic/Latino identity as such is to a great extent an American construction, though of course the commonalities of Latin America are clear. One could say the same for the even more incoherent term Asian American.
