A Pivotal Decade for America's White and Minority Populations...

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0325_census_demogr...

FRIDAY MARCH 25, 2011

STATE OF METROPOLITAN AMERICA | NUMBER 28

A Pivotal Decade for America's White and Minority Populations

2010 Census, Demographics, Race, Ethnicity, Migration William H. Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program The Brookings Institution

MARCH 25, 2011

The first nationwide picture on race and ethnicity from the 2010 Census is now complete, and shows the United States at a demographic pivot point between its racial past and multi-ethnic future. Some results, admittedly, are not too surprising. Certainly most people knew that there we were experiencing a large growth of new minority populations, Hispanics and Asians. Over the decade, Hispanic population hit the 50 million mark, and Asians led all groups in population growth. Yet an initial look at the data provides another view. The first decade of the 21
th st

century represents a clear break from the 20 , as the United States transitions from a largely white/black nation experiencing robust population growth, to one that juxtaposes an aging white population, growing new minority populations, and a sharply altered geography for blacks. The following statistics are telling: of the 27.3 added to U.S. population between 2000 and 2010, only 2.3 were non-Hispanic whites, representing about 9 percent of total growth. This compares with a 20 percent contribution in the 1990s, and far higher contributions in earlier decades. Hispanics accounted for well over half of our gains, while Asians made the next biggest contribution. So while whites still comprise 64 percent of the nations population, our nearly 10 percent growth over the 2000s would be less than 4 percent were it not for Hispanics and Asians. The X factor of new minority growth looms large locally as well as nationally. Among the 49 states with growing populations, the combination of Hispanics, Asians and members of smaller new minorities accounted for all or most of the growth in 33 of these states. These include traditional melting-pot states such as Florida, Texas, and California, as well as whiter, slow growing states such as
State of Metropolitan America
ALSO IN THIS SERIES NUMBER 27

Black Populations Dropping in Big Cities

William H. Frey, March 22, 2011 NUMBER 26

Growth in School-Age Minority Population Signals Demographic Tipping Point

William H. Frey, February 07, 2011 NUMBER 25

Population Migration Declines Further: Stalling Brain Gains and Ambitions

William H. Frey, January 12, 2011

1 of 2

2/25/11 8:13 PM

A Pivotal Decade for America's White and Minority Populations...

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0325_census_demogr...

View All Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Nebraska. States in the latter category depend especially on new minority growth

for their demographic survival. The child population represents perhaps the most important part of the demographic pivot. Over the last decade, the U.S. population under age 18 grew by less than 3 percent. But the 2010 Census also reveals an absolute decline of white young people over this period, as well a somewhat smaller decline of black youths. Hispanics, Asians, and to a lesser degree multiracial children, accounted for all of the net growth the nations under-18 population. This is perhaps more telling about our nations future socially, economically, politicallythan any other statistic. The African American population, often overlooked in discussion of the nations changing demographics, showed a sharp geographic pivot in the 2000s. The signature settlement patterns that characterized blacks throughout most of the 20 centurythe Great Migration from South to North, and large concentrations in segregated city neighborhoodsare undergoing a dual reversal. The first reversal began in the 1990s, but continues in full force: a pronounced shift back to the South. Economic progress, cultural ties, and an emerging black middle class have driven greater numbers of blacks to prosperous southern metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Raleigh. At the same time, the states of Illinois and Michigan showed for the first time absolute losses in black population. About three-quarters of the countrys black population growth last decade took place in the South, compared with 65 percent in the 1990s. The second, newer reversal in the 2000s is a black flight of sorts from big cities with high concentrations of blacks. The number of black residents declined in 19 of the 30 biggest cities with the largest black concentrations. These losses were steepest in the largest northern black magnets of the past, Detroit and Chicago, but also occurred in southern cities like Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta as black residents relocated to the suburbs. New generations of African Americans with fewer ties to the segregated city neighborhoods of their parents and grandparents seem ready to follow earlier generations of whites to suburbia. Indeed, census results also confirm that black residential segregation declined in fully 92 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas over the decade. The demographic pivot evident in the new census data heralds an emerging U.S. racial and ethnic profile much different from that of our nations past. Old ideas of how race dynamics play out in cities and suburbs, along the coasts and in the heartland, and what it means to be a minority in America will shift dramatically. The 2010 Census gives strong hints about where we are heading, which in the best of all worldsand in hopeful contrast to many other parts of the globewill involve continued growth, youthful vitality, and a reinvention of the melting pot that characterized our country at the beginning of the 20 century.
th th

2 of 2

2/25/11 8:13 PM