Is It Time For A Black Baby Boom?
Demographer projections show blacks will lag behind others in population growth
Gangs and gun violence. Poor health outcomes. Disproportionate rates of incarceration.
Those are issues that minority communities in the U.S. have grappled with for decades, and all have proven to have profound effects on the makeup of those communities.
But in half a century, Hispanic and Asian Americans are expected to do something that African Americans likely won't -- double their U.S. populations by 2060, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Nowhere in the bureau's new report does it explain why that is. However, birth rates have fallen steadily for black women, even while life expectancy for blacks has shown moderate, but significant, gains.
So, if African Americans won’t keep pace with other ethnic groups, as demographers are predicting, does that mean they aren’t having enough babies? Not necessarily.
“Their projections for the Hispanic and Asian populations are based on assumptions that they will continue to grow at the rate they are, through natural births, deaths and net international migration,” Census Bureau public affairs official Robert Bernstein told Loop 21.
But a key phrase there that plays into the difference between black and others' population growth may be international migration. According to the 2010 American Community Survey, the main source countries of international migration to the U.S. by black people are Nigeria and the Caribbean nations of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados. However, migration from the four of those countries combined doesn't top the numbers coming to the U.S. from Mexico, China and India.
Hispanics are expected to more than double their population by 2060, to 128.8 million from 53.3 now. Asians are expected to do about the same, to 34.4 million from 15.9 now. Blacks are expected to increase by about half as much, 50 percent, to 61.8 million from 41.2 million. Additionally, by 2020, whites will not constitute a majority of the children under age 18.
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