Gen Z Americans – who were born between 1997 and 2012 – will be the last generation with a white majority and will give way to a post-2012 “majority minority” generation Alpha, according to a new study of updated US census data.
That change – when non-Hispanic white people will fall below half as a share of the overall US population – should come around 2045, the study predicts.
Projections of the nation’s demographic makeup, including age structure and race-ethnic composition, also show that the fastest population growth is occurring among the older population while the youth population declines.
“This [ageing] is not race neutral,” the author of the new Brookings Institute study, William Frey, said. “White Americans contributed substantially to older population gains compared to younger and middle-aged populations, which registered white declines.”
Frey, in his analysis, added: “These patterns have led to a ‘racial generation gap,’ in which the younger population – more influenced by immigration in recent decades – is far more diverse than older age groups.”
The net result, the author wrote, is that old-young racial gaps that already exist in much of the country are likely to persist in the near term.
“This is reflected in a cultural generation gap that underlies many aspects of the nation’s social fabric and politics, including views about the recent supreme court decision on affirmative action and state proposals to limit teaching about race and diversity in public schools,” Frey concluded.
But others warn that making predictions about diversity gleaned from census data is to oversimplify the story since people don’t necessarily see themselves as part of demographic sets.
“In a sense, we’re forming a new kind of mainstream society here, which is going to be very diverse,” City University of New York sociologist Richard Alba told the Hill. “But whites are going to be a big part of that.”
The Brookings study author suggests the changes would be better reflected if the next US census – in 2030 – dropped certain categories and adopted others.
Instead of identifying Hispanic, for instance, respondents could check any of several “origin” categories and write in any number of specific racial or ethnic identities.
