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rfmcdonaldI plan to write a Demography Matters blog post about this news item (here, reported by Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik of the Washington Post.
My question to you is, What do you think of this? Do you care about it one way or the other?
Me, I'm interested in it inasmuch as other people are reacting to it in a variety of ways, many predictably (many sadly predictable).
"Whites’ deaths outnumber births for first time"
More white people died in the United States last year than were born, a surprising slump coming more than a decade before the Census Bureau says that the ranks of white Americans will likely drop with every passing year.
Population estimates for 2012 released Thursday show what’s known as a natural decrease — a straightforward calculation of births minus deaths — of about 12,400 people among the nation’s 198 million non-Hispanic whites.
Census Bureau projections say the scenario would mark a milestone not seen in almost two centuries.
Although the percentage is small, several demographers said they are not aware of another time in U.S. history — not even during the Depression or wars — when there was such shrinkage among the dominant racial group. No other group showed a similar falloff.
The decrease was offset by 188,000 white immigrants, most from Canada and Germany but also from Russia and Saudi Arabia. And non-Hispanic whites remain the single largest group, making up 63 percent of the country.
But demographers were surprised by the outsize drop in births compared with deaths, which the Census Bureau projects will begin happening with regularity by 2025.
“We’re jumping the gun on a long, slow decline of our white population, which is going to characterize this century,” said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. “It’s a bookend from the last century, when whites helped us grow. Now it’s minorities who are going to make the contributions to our economic and population growth over the next 50 years.”
My question to you is, What do you think of this? Do you care about it one way or the other?
Me, I'm interested in it inasmuch as other people are reacting to it in a variety of ways, many predictably (many sadly predictable).
