17 states now record more white deaths than births
Within the next three decades, the Census Bureau estimates that minorities will outnumber whites in America. There are now more minority babies than white babies being born in America and more minority children than white children attending public schools.
The latest reminder of America’s demographic destiny came last week when researchers at the University of New Hampshire pointed out that an unprecedented 17 states recorded more white deaths than white births in 2014. These states are a geographically diverse bunch — between Connecticut, Alabama, California and Delaware, nearly all of the regions of the nation are represented.
Fifteen years ago, only four states — Pennsylva- nia, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Florida — were members of this club. Since then, the white nonHispanic population has aged. As the researchers note, half of the nation’s whites are now older than 43, up from 39 in 2000.
Demographers have made it clear that this trend will continue.
In fact, white deaths already have started to outnumber white births nationwide since 2013 , ac- cording to census data.
The next state to flip probably will be Oregon, Tennessee or South Carolina, where the margins between white births and white deaths are razor thin.
In Oregon, for instance, there were only 570 more white births than white deaths during 2014, the latest year that the CDC has data for. (And even that number overestimates the number of white births, because the CDC classifies babies according to the race and ethnicity of the mother, which overlooks the growing trend of interracial and interethnic couples in America.)
Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have shown that middle-aged whites have been dying slightly faster over the past decade, a startling trend that they blame in part on increasing drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that life expectancy for Americans declined between 2014 and 2015, a pattern driven largely by increasing white death rates.
But changes in mortality rates are only a small part of the picture. Hispanics and nonwhites are simply younger — half of Hispanics in America are still under the age of 27 — and more likely to have babies.