Fewer births than deaths among whites in majority of U.S. states
WASHINGTON — Deaths now outnumber births among white people in more than half the states in the country, demographers have found, signaling what could be a faster-than-expected transition to a future in which whites are no longer a majority of the U.S. population.
The Census Bureau has projected that whites could drop below 50 percent of the population around 2045, a relatively slow-moving change years in the making. But a new report this week found whites are dying faster than they are being born now in 26 states, up from 17 just two years earlier, and demographers say that shift might come even sooner.
“It’s happening a lot faster than we thought,” said Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a co-author of the report. It examines the period from 1999 to 2016 using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the federal agency that tracks births and deaths. He said he was so surprised at the finding that at first he thought it was a mistake.
The pattern first started nearly two decades ago in a handful of states with aging white populations such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But fertility rates dropped drastically after the Great Recession and mortality rates for whites who are not of Hispanic origin have been rising, driven partly by drug overdoses. That has put demographic change on a faster track. The list of states where white deaths outnumber births now includes North Carolina and Ohio.
The change has broad implications for identity and for the country’s political and economic life, transforming a mostly white baby boomer society into a multiethnic and racial patchwork. A majority of the youngest Americans already are nonwhite and look less like older generations than at any point in modern U.S. history. In California, 52 percent of all children are living in homes with at least one immigrant parent, Sáenz said.
What does it mean for the political map? Some experts say that rapid demographic change became a potent issue in the 2016 presidential race — and helped drive white voters to support Donald Trump.
Of the 26 states where deaths now exceed births for whites, 13 voted for Trump and 13 voted for Hillary Clinton. Four are states that flipped from President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 — Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. But it is not clear how demographic change will affect politics in the future.
“People say demographics is destiny, and there’ll be more people of color — all that is true,” said Jennifer Richeson, a social psychologist at Yale University. “But they also say the U.S. is going to become more progressive, and we don’t know that. We should not assume that white moderates and liberals will maintain current political allegiances, nor should we expect that the so-called nonwhite group is going to work in any kind of coalition.”