There may be more minority babies born this year in the U.S. than white babies for first time ever.
It could be a "tipping point" that propels our population toward minorities becoming the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.
In 1990, 37% of children born in the U.S. were minorities, but by 2008 it was 48%. This means the country is on track to become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century, according to Kenneth Johnson, of the University of New Hampshire. He researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday, the week before the 2010 population count, which begins in earnest next week when more than 120 million U.S. households receive census forms in the mail.
The baby trend doesn't hold true everywhere, however. In New York City, Manhattan and Brooklyn kids are more likely to be white, he said.
In 1990, Manhattan's youth population of kids under 20 was 25% white. But by 2008, census data estimates 37 percent of the borough's kids were white.
It's a similar story in Brooklyn: In 1990, 29 percent of the borough's kids were white. But 2008, it went up to 33 percent.
"The number of white children went up, while the number of black and Hispanic children went down," Johnson said, noting that it's hard to say why because there are so many competing demographic factors within New York City.
But the one other main place in the U.S. that's becoming more white is Fayette County, Tennessee, in suburban Memphis. The change there is because of suburban sprawl, Johnson said.
Source: NY Daily News
Follow Me @ChasinMoPaper
}
Comments