America’s white majority is aging out
Generation Z will be the last generation of Americans with a white majority, according to census data. The nation’s so-called majority minority arrived with Generation Alpha, those born since about…
thehill.com
Generation Z will be the last generation of Americans with a white majority, according to census data. The nation’s so-called majority minority arrived with Generation Alpha, those born since about 2010.
Barely two decades from now, around 2045, non-Hispanic white people will fall below half as a share of the overall U.S. population.
Those conclusions, and the numbers behind them, seem simple enough. Yet, some scholars contend that the numbers are wrong, or at least misleading, and that the looming ascent of a majority-minority America is a myth.
America’s white majority, and its numbered days, is a lightning-rod topic, given the nation’s history of slavery and enduring patterns of discrimination against minorities and immigrants.
Demographers and economists celebrate the nation’s growing diversity as vital to a prosperous future. Other voices vilify racial change as a threat to the nation’s white heritage.
“Race is the most complicated variable in the census, and it’s the one that draws people like moths to the flame,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and demography at the University of Southern California.
Generational data from the 2020 census shows the upward march of racial diversity by age group. Non-Hispanic white people make up 77 percent of the over age 75 population, 67 percent of the age 55-64 population, 55 percent of the 35-44 cohort, and barely half of the 18-24 age group. America’s children are only 47 percent non-Hispanic white, according to an analysis released this week by William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
In the decades to come, that wave of diversity will wash across the generations, yielding an America with no single racial group that can claim a numerical majority.
