As Minority Populations Grow

New York Times: In 1970, when I was 3, there were 170 million non-Hispanic white Americans, and they represented 83 percent of America's population. Today, there are 197 million non-Hispanic whites in this country, and they represent less than 64 percent of America's population. If current trends continue at the same pace - and if my life isn't cut short by overconsumption of oysters or cigars - I will live to see the 2050 Census measure an even more wonderfully diverse America, where my own demographic subgroup has become a minority. Without this increasing diversity, America's population would have been largely stagnant. Over the last 40 years, our country's population has increased by 106 million people. Seventy-four percent of that increase, 78 million people, came from the growth of the minority population. Over the last decade, the non-Hispanic white population increased by a paltry 2.26 million, less than a tenth of the overall population increase of 27 million. The different patterns of growth across the United States are also driven largely by growth in Hispanic and nonwhite populations. The chart below shows the relationship between the growth of a state's population and the share of that growth accounted for by growth in the state's minority population. (I excluded Michigan, which lost people, and Rhode Island, where growth in the minority population was 14 times greater than its tiny overall population growth.)