The Diversification of America

The United States population is getting more diverse, according to new data from the 2020 census that offers a once-in-a-decade look at the makeup of America. Over the past 10 years, people who identified as Hispanic, Asian or more than one race accounted for larger shares of the population, the data shows. Diversity is rising in almost every county. The overall U.S. population, though, grew at the slowest rate in nearly a century. William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, described the data as a pivotal moment for the country.

“We have people of color who are younger and growing more rapidly,” he told The Times’s Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff. “They are helping to propel us further into a century where diversity is going to be the signature of our demography.” The share of people who identify as white has been declining since the 1960s, when the U.S. opened up more widely to immigrants from outside Europe. But over the past decade, the total number of white people fell for the first time. The total population has grown at a drastically slower rate over the past decade. The growth that did occur since 2010 — an increase of about 23 million people — was made up entirely of people who identified as Hispanic, Asian, Black or more than one race.

Source: The New York Times