Whites to be minority in America in 2043: Census
Data from the 2011 census shows that for the first time, babies from ethnic and racial minorities account for more than half of births in the US.
New US Census data indicates white people will not be a majority in America by 2043, according to the Associated Press.
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Minority-race babies have already overtaken their white counterparts in the US, while non-white children are set to follow suit in 2019, the Irish Times said, citing the new government projections.
Thanks to its growing immigrant community, the US will "become the first major post-industrial society in the world where minorities will be the majority," immigration specialist Marcelo Suarez-Orozco of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies told AP.
The new data shows America's demographic shift toward greater diversity. The white population of the US currently stands at some 64 percent of the population, said AP, compared with 85 percent in 1960.
Brookings Institute demographer William Frey said no matter what happens, the white population is going down.
"Irrespective of future immigration and minority fertility patterns, the US is facing a stagnating white population," he told AP. "The biggest shift will occur over the next 20 years as the mostly white baby boom generation moves into traditional retirement years. It is in the child and early labor force ages where we must be ready for the greatest changes as new American minorities take over for aging whites."
The census projections released today say the US population, currently at 315 million, will reach 420.3 million in 2060 — at which point, its white population is expected to stand at 43 percent.
Today's figures put the white population shift a year later than earlier estimates, said the Irish Times.