Study: Whites Becoming the New Youth Minority

A report predicts that whites will become a minority of all U.S. children faster than expected, and before the decade ends, The New York Times reports. America’s under-18 population will become minority-white in 2019, four years sooner than the Census Bureau had forecast, says the new study by the Brookings Institution.

The shift to a non-white youth majority is happening despite falling numbers of black children over the last decade. The change is instead being paced by higher birth rates among Hispanics, Asians and mixed-race people, says the survey by Brookings demographer William Frey, who also predicts the U.S. will become an overall minority-white country around 2041.

Hispanics, with a median age of 27, are having more children than any U.S. ethnic group. The median age of non-Hispanic whites is 41, the profile of an older population that contains fewer women of child-bearing age.

The study says ethnic and cultural differences between younger and older Americans could have future implications for state and federal policy, electoral politics and the economy.