Minority Births Are New Majority

A demographic milestone has been passed that will be important to marketers and publishers. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal puts it:

For the first time in US history, whites of European ancestry account for less than half of newborn children, marking a demographic tipping point that is already changing the nation's politics, economy, and workforce.

Theologian Martin E. Marty suggests,

Insert the word “Religion” next to “Politics” and “Economy” ... and you will have the mix which excites, troubles, and provides new agendas.

According to the WSJ,

Among the roughly four million children born in the US between July 2010 and July 2011, 50.4% belonged to a racial or ethnic group that in previous generations would have classified them as minorities, up from 48.6% in the same period two years earlier, the Census Bureau says. That was the first 12-month stretch in which non-Hispanic white children accounted for less than half the country's births.

The New York Times says,

While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Read the WSJ article in full.

Read The NYT article in full.

Read Martin Marty’s commentary in full.

Read the Census Bureau news release.

Also see our previous blogposts, “Millennials Aren't Kids Anymore; Plurals Are” and “New Website for Demographic Info.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you reach your brand’s targeted demographic.

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