The new face of America: by 2042, minorities will make up the majority of the U.S. population. What will this demographic sea-change mean?

• Author: Roberts, Sam
• Position: NATIONAL

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Jessica Martinez is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant mother who never graduated from high school. But Martinez, now 18 and a freshman at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, didn't feel like an outsider growing up in northern New Mexico.

"There's a huge Latino presence here, so I never felt like a minority," she says.

New Mexico and other states like California and Texas where "minorities" already outnumber whites, are on the vanguard of an enormous demographic shift that's taking place in the United States: The Census Bureau projects that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites.

In other words, in a little more than a generation, the U.S. will be a "majority minority" country, with ethnic and racial minorities constituting a majority of the nation's population.

"No other country has experienced such rapid racial and ethnic change," says Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C.

The main reason for the accelerating change, according to the Census Bureau, is higher birthrates among immigrants, along with an increase in the number of foreigners coming to the United States.

This shift is happening even faster among younger Americans: In just 15 years, minorities will constitute a majority of those under 18, and they will be a majority of working-age Americans by 2039.

The question is what this shift will mean for the country.

"Historically, it's been hard for multiracial and multiethnic societies to create a common civic culture," says Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. "So the question for us is, can we be one of the first successful ones? We're headed into uncharted territory. I'm not pessimistic, but I don't think we should be Pollyanna-ish about this."

21ST-CENTURY BENEFIT

For the first time, both the number and the proportion of whites, who now account for 66 percent of the population, will decline, starting around 2030. By 2050, their share will dip to 46 percent.

Some experts say the nation's increasing diversity may better prepare Americans for the globalized world of the 21st century.

"As much as the baby boomers embraced new ideas, they didn't grow up in a very international setting with many immigrants," explains William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "What's going to change...