Census update: U.S. more diverse

Minority babies outnumber whites

WASHINGTON — A new Census Bureau report shows the babyboom generation fading further into the gray and giving way to millennials in a country whose younger generations are also becoming more diverse.

The white population in the United States reached an alltime high median age of 43, while those younger than 5 were outnumbered by minority children.

“That’s a reflection of how the U.S. is aging,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center.

At the same time, the latest census data show that China has replaced Mexico as the chief source of U.S. immigrants. Hispanic immigration has slowed overall even as Asian migration chugs along.

“At the national level, a lot of

these trends we see now tend to be continuations of older trends,” said Ben Bolender, chief of the Census Bureau’s population estimates branch.

The annual update of population estimates released by the Census Bureau on Thursday includes changes by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin nationwide and by states and counties between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2014. Although the report is short on dramatic shifts, it offers a snapshot of further changes in long-term trends, especially as the nation becomes older and more diverse.

“In a sense, 2015 marks the demographic passing of the baby boom generation, and it will continue to be an ever smaller part of the total U.S. population until it disappears altogether later this century,” said Matthew Snipp, a sociology professor at Stanford University.

William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America,” said the report shows that the white population is growing older and shrinking in proportion to minority groups, with whites experiencing a higher number of deaths than births. Non-Hispanic, single-race whites were the only group for which deaths exceeded births between 2013 and 2014. Minority children younger than 5 now make up 50.2 percent of that population group, the report found.

“This year is the first time the 0 to 4 population is minority-majority,” Bolender said. It was shift long expected: In 2013, the rate was close enough — about 50-50 — that young minority children were on the cusp of outnumbering white children, but now the number has decisively moved into the majority, Bolender said. At the same time, the under-20 population is 52.2 percent white nationwide.