Non-whites to make up 57% of U.S. population by 2060 – report

PanARMENIAN.Net - A surge in Hispanics and Asians is set to dramatically change the face of the United States over the next 50 years, with no one ethnic group the majority, according to U.S. figures that depict an aging nation with slower population growth, Reuters reported

By 2060, non-whites will make up 57 percent of the U.S. population, more than doubling from 116.2 million in 2012 to 241.3 million, according to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau released on Wednesday. Racial minorities are now 37 percent of the population, it said.

The shift will largely be fueled by minority births that continue to outpace those of whites, the agency said, based on data from the 2010 Census.

Nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Hispanic by 2060, up from one in six now, it said. The Asian population is also expected to more than double over the next five decades.

"The U.S. will become a plurality nation, where the non-Hispanic white population remains the largest single group, but no group is in the majority," Thomas Mesenbourg, the agency's acting director, said in a statement.

The United States has been on a steady path to greater racial diversity, and experts have predicted for years that minorities would be the "majority" before 2050. The Census Bureau on Wednesday projected that would happen in 2043.

The number of older Americans is expected to more than double.

Those aged 65 and older will rise from 43.1 million in 2012, or one in seven, to 92 million in 2060, or one in five, according to the Census Bureau.

"The increase in the number of the 'oldest old' would be even more dramatic," the agency said in its statement.

Americans age 85 and older will more than triple from 5.9 million to 18.2 million over the same period, it predicted.

Even as the white population declines, it will still make up the largest ethnic group, even though whites will no longer hold the majority. In 2060, there will be about 179 million whites compared, for example, to 128.8 million Hispanics, Census said.