White Children Now A Minority In California, States Report (UPDATED)
(UPDATED with Valley stats after the jump). Don't tell the producers of The Hills or any of the other youth-oriented television shows that seem to portray people of color as background noise in California, but for the Golden State's under-18 population whites are now a minority.
This according to U.S. Census data from 2000 to 2009 analyzed by the New York Times, which attributes the shift, in part, to higher birth rates among immigrants. The Golden State was among the top-ten states that saw increases under-18 populations.
The emergence of a nonwhite majority among children should be no surprise to Angelenos, who live in a city that is nearly 50 percent Latino. And, as LAist reported this week, Latinos have now edged out whites as the largest ethnic group in the once Leave It To Beaver-like San Fernando Valley.
Meanwhile California joins Arizona, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas as states where "minority" non-adults are now the majority. "The shift of families with children to the Sun Belt magnets is shaping more diverse populations for years to come," William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, told the Times.
The changes could also mean greater disparities between the politics of older white voters and those of younger minorities at the polls, the paper argues.
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