New Demographics Illustrate Changing Face of America
America’s white population growth continues to slow and the nation’s population continues to get more diverse–and grayer.
Last month, the Census Bureau released its 2016 population estimates by race, age and sex. The report said between 2015 and 2016, the U.S. population grew by 0.7 percent to 324.1 million. Trulia, San Francisco, broke down the data (https://www.trulia.com/blog/trends/census-17/) and came up with the following findings:
—White Population Growth Continues to Slow: Nationally, the population of non-Hispanic whites only made up 0.2% of all population growth between 2015 and 2016, the smallest portion in the Census’ population estimates history. By contrast, Hispanics made up 50.7% of the growth, Asians 23.4%, blacks 15.8% and those identifying as two or more races 8.6%.
The white population grew the slowest at less than 0.1% and actually declined in 53 of the 100 largest metro areas. Nationally, they accounted for only 0.2% of all population growth compared with 6.2% of growth between 2000 and 2010 and 4.9% of growth between 2010 and 2015. Cape Coral, Fla., saw the fastest growth of its white population at 2.4% between 2015 and 2016, while the largest decline was in El Paso, Texas, which lost 2.3% and already had the smallest proportion of its population identifying only as white of any of the largest 100 metro areas at 12.4%. Since 2000, the population identifying as white has declined the most, by 1.7% annually, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and increased the most in Raleigh, by 2.5% annually. Since 2000, there is only one metro in the largest 100 that has had its proportion of population identifying as non-Hispanic white increase, and that was in Charleston-North Charleston, S.C., which went from 64.1% to 64.4% 16 years later.
—America is Getting Grayer: Trulia said not a single metro saw an increase in the proportion of people under the age 20 between 2015 and 2016 and only five saw an increase or had an unchanged proportion of 25 to 64 year olds. All saw an increase in the share of their population 65 years of age or more and nationally, that share went from 14.9% to 15.2%.
—Hispanics Make Up Less of the Bay Area: Of the biggest 100 metro areas, only San Francisco, and San Jose, Calif., saw a decline in their populations identifying as Hispanic. Populations there fell 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively.
—Florida Metros Are Changing Fast: Racially and ethnically, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Las Vegas, and Orlando, Fla., experienced the most rapid change between 2015 and 2016 a trend that began in 2000. St. Louis was the most unchanged metro between 2015 and 2016 and the second-slowest changing since 2000, after Pittsburgh.
The report also noted 26 of the 100 largest metro areas were majority minority, in which national minorities made up a majority of the local population, unchanged from 2015, but up from 14 majority-minority metros in 2000.
