June 13, 2013

Asian-Americans were the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in America (not the largest, but the fastest growing) according to data released by the Census Bureau.

And the state with the fastest-growing Asian population? South Dakota of all places.

Khapangi, an Asian refugee who moved to Sioux Falls, S.D. in 2011 says, “It’s easy to find a job here in South Dakota, so people from other states are also moving here.”

South Dakota’s Asian population isn’t much compared to the six million Asians living in California. But the Census Bureau says it shows just how much the Asian population is growing overall.

Other minority populations continued to grow as well. The Hispanic population — the country’s second-largest racial or ethnic group — grew by 2.2 percent. America’s Asian population grew almost 60 percent mostly due to international migration. But the increase in Hispanic-Americans is due primarily to natural births.

People “of color” (all non-white races) now compose about 37 percent of the total population. But here’s something to watch: among children under 5, children of color comprised 49.9 percent of that age group in 2012.

As well as the numbers of people of color in the country growing, it’s worth highlighting some of the interesting shifts happening within America’s minority population as well. Washington, D.C., for example — one of five states where the majority-minority population is equally divided — is also changing so that among the minority races the Blacks make up only 50% of it, down from as high at 71% in the 1970s.

Deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic white Americans for the first time in at least a century, the Times reports. The decrease for the year ending July 1, 2012, coupled with the fact that a majority of births in the United States are now to Hispanic, black and Asian mothers, further shows that white Americans will become a minority nationwide within about three decades.

_______________________________________________________________________________