Trending: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites

Deaths now outnumber births among whites in more than half the states in the country, according to a new report.

While the Census Bureau had projected that whites would drop to below 50 percent of the population and no longer be the majority race in America around 2045, the new report notes that a pattern, which started nearly two decades ago in a handful of states with aging white populations like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, has accelerated.

In 17 of the 26 states with white natural decreases, the white population diminished overall between 2015 and 2016. Specifically, whites are dying faster than they are being born now in 26 states, up from 17 just two years earlier, and demographers say the demographic shift might come before 2045.

Rogelio Sáenz and Kenneth M. Johnson, authors of the new report wrote, “We find a significant rise in the number of states experiencing white natural decrease in the last few years.” The title of the new report is, “White Deaths Exceed Births in a Majority of U.S. States.”

Specifically, whites accounted for 77.7 percent of all U.S. deaths in 2016, but just 53.1 percent of births, according to this new report. The median age for Hispanics in the United States is 29, prime for child bearing, compared with 43 for whites.

The report continued, “African-Americans had natural decline in only one state (West Virginia, -131) in 2016 as did Asians and Pacific Islanders (Hawaii, -906), while Latino births exceeded deaths in every state.”

But the pattern was starkly evident in earlier reports including a June 2017 Census Bureau report that showed Asian and mixed-race people are the two fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population Both groups grew by 3 percent from July 2015 to July 2016. The Asian population grew by 3.0 percent to 21.4 million. In the same 12 months, the non-Hispanic white population grew by just 5,000 people.