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FRIDAY MARCH 25, 2011

State of Metropolitan

America

ALSO IN THIS SERIES

NUMBER 27

Black Populations

Dropping in Big CitiesWilliam H. Frey, March 22, 2011

NUMBER 26

Growth in School-Age

Minority Population

Signals Demographic

Tipping PointWilliam H. Frey, February 07, 2011

NUMBER 25

Population Migration

Declines Further: Stalling

Brain Gains and Ambitions

William H. Frey, January 12, 2011

MARCH 25, 2011 —

The first nationwide picture on race and ethnicity from the 2010 Census is now complete, and shows the United

States at a demographic pivot point between its racial past and multi-ethnic future.

Some results, admittedly, are not too surprising. Certainly most people knew that there we were experiencing a

large growth of “new minority” populations, Hispanics and Asians. Over the decade, Hispanic population hit the 50

million mark, and Asians led all groups in population growth.

Yet an initial look at the data provides another view. The first decade of the 21st

century represents a clear break from the 20th

, as the United States transitions

from a largely white/black nation experiencing robust population growth, to one

that juxtaposes an aging white population, growing new minority populations,

and a sharply altered geography for blacks.

The following statistics are telling: of the 27.3 added to U.S. population between

2000 and 2010, only 2.3 were non-Hispanic whites, representing about 9

percent of total growth. This compares with a 20 percent contribution in the

1990s, and far higher contributions in earlier decades. Hispanics accounted for 

well over half of our gains, while Asians made the next biggest contribution. So

while whites still comprise 64 percent of the nation’s population, our nearly 10

percent growth over the 2000s would be less than 4 percent were it not for 

Hispanics and Asians.

The “X factor” of new minority growth looms large locally as well as nationally.

Among the 49 states with growing populations, the combination of Hispanics,

Asians and members of smaller new minorities accounted for all or most of the

growth in 33 of these states. These include traditional melting-pot states such as

Florida, Texas, and California, as well as whiter, slow growing states such as

STATE OF METROPOLITAN AMERICA | NUMBER 28

Pivotal Decade for America's White and Minority Populations2010 Census, Demographics, Race, Ethnicity, Migration

illiam H. Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

The Brookings Institution

A Pivotal Decade for America's White and Minority Populations... http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0325_census_dem

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View All »Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Nebraska. States in the latter category depend especially on new minority growth

for their demographic survival.

The child population represents perhaps the most important part of the

demographic pivot. Over the last decade, the U.S. population under age 18 grew by less than 3 percent. But the

2010 Census also reveals an absolute decline of white young people over this period, as well a somewhat

smaller decline of black youths. Hispanics, Asians, and to a lesser degree multiracial children, accounted for allof the net growth the nation’s under-18 population. This is perhaps more telling about our nation’s future

—socially, economically, politically—than any other statistic.

The African American population, often overlooked in discussion of the nation’s changing demographics, showed

a sharp geographic pivot in the 2000s. The signature settlement patterns that characterized blacks throughout

most of the 20th

century—the Great Migration from South to North, and large concentrations in segregated city

neighborhoods—are undergoing a dual reversal. The first reversal began in the 1990s, but continues in full

force: a pronounced shift “back” to the South. Economic progress, cultural ties, and an emerging black middle

class have driven greater numbers of blacks to prosperous southern metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Dallas,

Houston, and Raleigh. At the same time, the states of Illinois and Michigan showed for the first time absolutelosses in black population. About three-quarters of the country’s black population growth last decade took place

in the South, compared with 65 percent in the 1990s.

The second, newer reversal in the 2000s is a “black flight” of sorts from big cities with high concentrations of 

blacks. The number of black residents declined in 19 of the 30 biggest cities with the largest black

concentrations. These losses were steepest in the largest northern black magnets of the past, Detroit and

Chicago, but also occurred in southern cities like Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta as black residents relocated to the

suburbs. New generations of African Americans with fewer ties to the segregated city neighborhoods of their 

parents and grandparents seem ready to follow earlier generations of whites to suburbia. Indeed, census results

also confirm that black residential segregation declined in fully 92 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas over the

decade.

The demographic pivot evident in the new census data heralds an emerging U.S. racial and ethnic profile much

different from that of our nation’s past. Old ideas of how race dynamics play out in cities and suburbs, along the

coasts and in the heartland, and what it means to be a minority in America will shift dramatically. The 2010

Census gives strong hints about where we are heading, which in the best of all worlds—and in hopeful contrast

to many other parts of the globe—will involve continued growth, youthful vitality, and a reinvention of the melting

pot that characterized our country at the beginning of the 20th

century.

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