Ethnic Minorities Now The Majority of U.S. Births

Photo Credit: alles-schlumpf

From USA Today:

"More than half of all babies born last year were members of minority groups, the first time in U.S. history. It's a sign of how swiftly the USA is becoming a nation of younger minorities and older whites. 

Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other minorities in 2011 accounted for 50.4% of births, 49.7% of all children under 5 and slightly more than half of the 4 million kids under 1, the Census Bureau reports today. 

The nation's growing diversity has huge implications for education, economics and politics. "Children are in the vanguard of this transition," says Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. 

In all, minorities had 5.9% fewer babies last year than in 2010, but births among non-Hispanic whites fell even more, down 10.1%, Johnson says. A key reason: A greater share of the minority population is of child-bearing age. 

The new report offers a broad picture of where and how the nation is changing. One telling sign: vast differences in the median age — the mid-point of all ages — of racial and ethnic groups. For Hispanics, the USA's largest minority group, the median age is 27.6. For whites who are not Hispanic, it's 42.3. Blacks (30.9) and Asians (33.2) are in between."

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