New data indicate that more than half of the babies that were born in the United States last year were from minority groups.
Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other minorities accounted for nearly 2.02 million or 50.4 percent of US births in the 12-month period ending July 2011, the Census Bureau reported.
The nation’s overall minority population continues to climb after an unexpectedly high Hispanic population count during the 2010 census.
The census estimates also pointed to the prolonged consequences of a weak US economy which have led to fewer Hispanics entering the country.
The annual growth rates for Hispanics and Asians sharply declined last year to merely over two percent, almost half the rates in 2000 and the lowest in more than a decade. The population growth rate of African-Americans, however, remained flat at one percent.
Of the 30 large US metropolitan areas showing the largest Hispanic growth in the past decade, all indicated slower growth in 2011 than in the peak Hispanic growth years of 2005-2006, when the construction boom drew in new migrants to low-wage work, according to the report.
The latest data indicate that the percentage growth rate of Hispanics declined from 4.2 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent in 2011. Their population growth would have been even lower if it were not for their relatively high fertility rates of seven births for every death, the report notes.
——Agencies