Population Growth

 

People of Color Made Up All of the United States’ Population Growth in the Last 10 Years

Demographers have known for decades that the United States is well on its way to becoming a predominantly multi-racial and multi-ethnic society. New data from the 2020 Census reveals how rapidly that transformation is taking place.

Increasing numbers of people identify racially as either Asian or multi-racial. Growing numbers of people identify ethnically as Latino (which can include people of any race). Meanwhile, the number who identify as non-Latino white-only has begun to decrease for the first time in U.S. history.

These trends should serve as a warning to politicians who rely on racist and xenophobic rhetoric to exploit the unease that many native-born, non-Latino whites feel about these demographic changes. Politicians who encourage fear of immigrants and minorities are playing to a shrinking base. Meanwhile, the number of Americans who come from minority or immigrant backgrounds continues to grow.

(The Census Bureau cautions that some of the differences between the results of the 2010 census and the 2020 census reflect improvements that were made in how race and ethnicity were measured in the 2020 census.)

The new data, as summarized by the Census Bureau and analyzed by The Brookings Institution, highlights several important demographic trends.