Minority Youth Lead Shift to Majority

This analysis from The Brookings Institution examines how these shifts are playing out, and where the trend is most pronounced.

"The new Census results show 49.8 percent of infants under age one are members of a race-ethnic minority – up from 42.4 percent in 2000. Given this trajectory, and the fact that the Census was taken well over a year ago, it is almost certain we have now "tipped" racially, and more than half of all national births are minorities. More than a quarter of infants are Hispanic, Blacks and Asians comprise 13.6 and 4.2 percent, respectively. Nearly one in twenty births were reported to be two or more races.

The geography of this change is important. Our larger, most urbanized states – magnets for immigrants and "new minorities" as well as major settlements for Blacks – are leading the way toward this transformation. Minority infants now represent the majority of births in 14 states, up from 7 in 2000; the newest ones include New York, New Jersey and Florida (Table 1). California and Texas had already reached this status, and Illinois just missed out."