Whites to be minority in US by 2050: Study

The US population will rise by 48 per cent by 2050, with newly arrived immigrants accounting for 82 per cent of the growth, according to the projections by the Pew Research Center.

The projections show that of the 117 million people added due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million would be their US-born children or grandchildren.

The study also found that nearly one in five Americans (19 per cent) will be an immigrant in 2050, compared with one in eight (12 per cent) in 2005. By 2025, the immigrant, or foreign-born, share of the population will surpass the peak during the last great wave of immigration a century ago.

According to the projections the white, also termed as the non-Hispanic population, will become a minority in the country, dropping from 67 per cent of the population in 2005 to 47 per cent in 2050. The white population, which stood at 199 million in 2005, will grow to 207 million in 2050, a mere 4 per cent increase.

Meanwhile, the Hispanic or Latino population, already the nation's largest minority group, will soar from 14 per cent of the population in 2005 to 29 per cent in 2050. The Hispanic population will account for most of the nation's population growth from 2005 through 2050.

The Asian population, 14 million in 2005, will grow to 41 million in 2050, nearly tripling in size. In 2050, the nation's population would be 9 per cent Asian, compared with 5 per cent in 2005. Most Asians in the US were foreign born in 2005 (58 per cent), but by 2050, fewer than half (47 per cent) will be.

The black population will grow to 59 million in 2050, a rise of 56 per cent.