American Demographics October 2019

OCTOBER 2019

Are We Getting Ready for a Recession?

New income and spending statistics may give a clue Americans Are Becoming Less Religious… Or Are They?

Millennials may hold the answer Your Chances of Surviving Middle Age Who will be there for your 50th high school reunion?

The Rise and Fall of Household Spending on Guns A surprising look at America’s ownership habits On the Bookshelf New books and films are putting population trends into focus

THE REAL COST OF STUDENT DEBT

So you are not from around here.

We’ll just list you as Native Hawaiian.

IN THIS ISSUE OF

OCTOBER 2019

PUBLISHER Phillip Russo

EDITORIAL STAFF

4 American Demographics is Back!

Brad Edmondson Cheryl Russell

5 Are We Getting Ready for a Recession?

Dan Fost George Puro

6 Americans Are Becoming

Less Religious‌Or Are They?

8 The Real Cost of Student Debt 12 Y our Chances of Surviving Middle Age 14 T he Rise and Fall of

Household Spending on Guns

Dane Twining Tom Prendergast

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Melissa Subatch

American Demographics and americandemographics.com are owned by the Private Label Manufacturers

15 This Month’s Bookshelf New books and films are putting population trends into focus

Association, 630 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 and licensed for publication by Kent Media, 240 Central Park South, New York, N.Y. 10019. Periodicals postage paid at Macedonia, OH and additional mailing offices.

All rights reserved under the Library of Congress.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing by the copyright owners.

OCTOBER 2019

Are We Getting Ready for a Recession?

New income and spending statistics may give a clue Americans Are Becoming Less Religious… Or Are They?

Millennials may hold the answer Your Chances of Surviving Middle Age Who will be there for your 50th high school reunion?

The Rise and Fall of Household Spending on Guns A surprising look at America’s ownership habits On the Bookshelf New books and films are putting population trends into focus

THE REAL COST OF STUDENT DEBT

American Demographics is Back!

elcome

to

American

Demographics.

Thank you for the heartwarming response that the rebirth of this magazine has drawn. There are many great stories to tell and it is clearer than ever before that basic demographics are at play in our social, economic and political environment.

For several years, we heard the phrase “polarization” to describe the problems and lack of solutions facing our society. Now we see exactly what polarization means: It means the clash of demographics all around us. The 2020 election may help resolve some of the thunder and lightning we see and hear but it will not change the importance of better recognition and understanding of the forces at work and how they play out.

For more than 25 years, American Demographics was the place to go for information about these trends. With a staff of editors, regular freelancers and expert correspondents, the magazine pored through the dense governmental and academic publications in demographics, geology, gerontology, sociology and other fields to provide insight into the diverse world around us.

American Demographics is back and we thank you for your support and loyalty.

to subscribe, visit: www.americandemographics.com

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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I OCTOBER 2019

By Cheryl Russell

Are We Getting Ready for a Recession?

New income and spending statistics may give a clue

or demographers, nothing beats the excitement of the September day each year when the Census Bureau releases the latest income estimates from the Current Population Survey. Not to be outdone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases on the same day the latest spending statistics from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. With all this new economic data in hand, it’s time to consider whether the chatter is right or wrong. Is another recession imminent?

analysis reveals three reasons why the pauses of 2018 are statistical artifacts rather than signs of impending recession.

You might think it is, because at first glance economic progress at the household level appears to have stalled. Not only did median household income fail to grow in 2018 after three straight years of gains, but growth in average household spending also screeched to a halt.

2. Incomes are growing. Wages are rising. Median household income grew significantly in most age groups between 2017 and 2018, after adjusting for inflation. The median earnings of fulltime workers also increased during the year, rising by more than 3 percent for both men and women.

The $63,200 median household income of 2018 was statistically unchanged from the 2017 figure after adjusting for inflation.

The median had been rising for several years, and we had come to expect such growth. In 2017, the median had finally climbed to the point of matching the record high of 2007. For the past decade, then, all we’ve been doing is climbing out of the Great Recession sinkhole.

3. More fun money. Average household spending may not have increased in 2018, after adjusting for inflation, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The stability in spending is the result of gains in some categories and declines in others. One of the biggest spending declines of 2018 freed up nondiscretionary dollars for discretionary purposes—a positive for the economy. Average household spending on mortgage interest fell 17 percent between 2017 and 2018 as some homeowners paid off their loans and others refinanced their mortgages. This decline minted fun money, which explains why Americans boosted their spending on alcoholic beverages, hotels and motels, major appliances, women’s clothes, and public transportation (which includes airline and ship fares).

As with median household income, average household spending was statistically unchanged from the 2017 figure after adjusting for inflation. To make matters worse, the $61,200 average of 2018 barely surpassed the inflation-adjusted $60,300 spent by the average household back in 2006—just prior to the Great Recession—which had been the record high until 2017. Does this mean a recession is not far off?

Not necessarily. These two figures—median household income and average household spending—mask all-important details.

To see what’s really happening requires a closer look at income trends by age group and spending trends by category. Such an

1. Baby boom and baby bust. In 2006 and 2007—when income and spending previously peaked—the baby boom generation was in the peak earning and spending age group of 45 to 54. Today, the small Generation X is in that age group. This demographic shift is putting downward pressure on median household income and average household spending.

A more nuanced look at American incomes and spending shows few warning signs of a consumer pullback. This doesn’t mean there won’t be a recession, of course, since we might talk ourselves into one, as the New York Times recently cautioned. But if a recession does occur, it won’t be because median household income and average household spending took a breather in 2018.

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I OCTOBER 2019

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Americans Are Becoming Less Religious …

Or Are They?

Millennials may hold the answer

mericans are among the most religious people in the world. Fully 77 percent of U.S. adults identify with a specific religion—such as Protestant, Catholic, and so on. Only 23 percent say they have no religious affiliation, according to the 2018 General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center.

“

A growing share of

Americans is reporting no religious affiliation

”

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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I OCTOBER 2019

The percentage of adults without a religious affiliation in the United States is just a fraction of the share in most European countries. In the Netherlands, more than two-thirds of adults—68 percent—have no religious affiliation. In Denmark, the figure is 61 percent, in the United Kingdom 53 percent and in France 44 percent. Worldwide, the percentage of the population without a religious affiliation ranges from a high of 75 percent in the Czech Republic to a low of less than 1 percent in Thailand and Bangladesh. On this scale, the U.S. is closer to highly religious Thailand and Bangladesh than it is to the irreligious Czech Republic.

But as you might have heard, things are changing. A growing share of Americans is reporting no religious affiliation. Just 5 percent of people aged 18 or older said they had no religious affiliation in 1972, according to the General Social Survey. In 2018, a much larger 23 percent reported having no religion. What’s behind the increase? Younger generations, who are more likely to report having no religious affiliation, are replacing older generations who are more likely to identify with a religion. Fully onethird of millennials reported having no religious affiliation in 2018 compared with 20 percent of Gen Xers, 16 percent of boomers, and 11 percent of older Americans.

Could this “what, me worry” attitude toward religion among millennials be nothing more than a youthful phase? Will millennials become more religious with age? Not according to an American

Demographics cohort analysis of how each generation’s religious beliefs have (and have not) changed over the decades. Way back in 1978, when boomers were aged 18 to 32, 14 percent said they had no religious affiliation. Twenty years later in 1998, the figure was an almost identical 13 percent. Jump ahead another 20 years to 2018, and the figure is a similar 16 percent. In forty years, there has been no statistically significant change in the share of boomers who do not have a religious affiliation.

Have millennial attitudes changed over time? Not so far.

In 2008, when millennials were aged 18 to 31, 27 percent reported no religious affiliation. Ten years later in 2018, 33 percent reported no religious affiliation. Again, there has been no statistically significant change in the religious affiliation of millennials. It is likely that millennials will feel pretty much the same in 2028 and 2038 as they feel today.

People can and do change their minds about some things— they are increasingly likely to favor the legalization of marijuana, for example, and they are increasingly supportive of same-sex relationships. But religious beliefs are much more stable. This doesn’t mean the United States won’t become more irreligious over time. It all depends on the beliefs of the generations that follow millennials.

Percent with no religious affiliation by generation, 2018

11% 33%

16% 20%

Millennials Gen Xers Boomers Older Americans

Note: In 2018, Millennials were aged 24 to 41; Gen Xers were aged 42 to 53; Boomers were aged 54 to 72; Older Americans were aged 73 or older.

Source: American Demographics’ analysis of the General Social Survey

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I OCTOBER 2019

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BY DAN FOST

THE REAL COST OF

STUDENT DEBT Signs grow that marriage, home buying, and children are delayed ollege represented opportunity for Adrian Griffin. A first-generation student from a small town in rural northern Michigan, she went to the University of Michigan and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. But in a story that’s becoming common around the country, she took on a large amount of debt—$75,000—and it’s changing the way she thought her life would turn out.

“I have delayed things such as purchasing a house and having children based upon the student loan debt that I currently have,” Griffin wrote on the Student Debt Crisis web site.

Her credit union, where she’s had two car loans, won’t give her a home loan, she said in an interview. A fixer-upper in Lakewood, Ohio, where she lives, shot up from $110,000 to $160,000 or more in the past four years, causing her to worry that it may be out of reach.

At age 34, she notes her doctor has advised her to have children before age 40, if not 38—and she hopes she can afford to by then.

“How is our generation supposed to get off on the right footing?” Griffin asks. “We’re supposed to save for retirement, but with the cost of rent and housing going up, how are you supposed to get along?”

Griffin and many of her fellow Millennials are putting off many of those big decisions in the hopes that they can get their college debt under control.

Economists and demographers are seeing changes everywhere. Young people aren’t buying homes

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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I OCTOBER 2019

the way they used to, they’re putting off marriage, and they’re having fewer babies.

These trends correlate with a massive uptick in student loans, and many are quick to connect the two.

“In the last decade, our society has been really transformed by the overwhelming presence of education-related debt,” says Suzanne Martindale, senior policy counsel and western states legislative manager for Consumer Reports.

About 42 million people carry a total of more than $1.5 trillion in student debt, Martindale says, and according to data from the Department of Education those who complete a bachelor’s degree owe, on average, $30,500 nationally. The percentage of households with student loan debt has more than doubled between 1992 and 2016, from 10.5 percent to 22.3 percent, according to an Employee Benefit Research Institute analysis of the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

“For so many people, particularly in urban centers where the cost of living is high, the thought of being able to save up for a major purchase, to be able to buy a home, to get married and start a family—some of those things seem beyond reach for people across income levels,” Martindale says. “It’s hard to imagine an area of life where student debt doesn’t have an impact.”

Cody Hounanian, program director at Student Debt Crisis, a nonprofit that advocates for change as well as helps people navigate the student loan system, says complaints roll in to his organization.

“I hear it every day,” Hounanian says. “Retirement, home ownership, even things like participating in community events or running for office—these are all things people have to sacrifice.”

“

In the last decade,

our society has been

really transformed by the overwhelming presence of education-related debt

”

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I OCTOBER 2019

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The Baby Bust

Putting off Marriage Young people are waiting an increasingly long time to marry, according to US Census Bureau data. In every year since 2000, the age has continued to rise to record highs. In 2000, the median age of women marrying for the first time was 25.1. By 2018, it had gone up to 27.8.

Over that same period, the median age of men marrying for the first time rose from 26.8 to 29.8.

A report that Pew Research released in February confirms that millennials—defined as those born between 1981 and 1996—“are delaying or forgoing marriage and have been somewhat slower in forming their own households.”

“

We definitely

put off having

kids because of the financial constraints

”

10

Is that because of student loans? In a 2016 survey of 1,000 people, 49 percent said they would delay engagement or marriage because of their own debt. The survey, by Bright Horizons EdAssist Solutions, which helps schools manage their tuition assistance programs, also found 77 percent said their loans had affected a personal relationship.

Segura also thought she’d have at least one child by age 30. “My parents bought their house at 21 and had their first kid around that same time,” she says. “I thought I’d have one or two by now.”

Fewer than 3.8 million children were born in the US in 2018—the lowest number of births since 1986, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. No matter how you slice the numbers, the result is fewer children: • A fter a record high 4.3 million births in 2007, the number has steadily dropped, falling in every year except for one small increase in 2014.

• T he general fertility rate—defined as the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44—fell to a record low of 59 in 2018, down 2 percent from 2017.

• T he total fertility rate—the number of births a woman can expect in her lifetime—also fell to a record low of 1.728 in 2018.

• B irth rates for young women—in the age groups 15 to 19, 20 to 24, and 25 to 29—also hit new record lows in 2018.

Alana Segura, 29, graduated from Boston University in 2013 with $175,000 in student loans, and still has not gotten married, even though she lives with her boyfriend and long thought she’d have children by this age.

Student debt can’t be blamed for all the declines in birth rates, but many demographers and economists attribute the ebb to economic uncertainty, including millennials who feel unsettled because they’re not yet married, or owning a house, or earning enough to pay their bills.

“I am lucky to have a partner who helps me and supports me but he has mentioned to me that he has not proposed because of my loan debt,” Segura wrote last year on the Student Debt Crisis web site.

“We definitely put off having kids because of the financial constraints, for sure,” says Sarah Szewczyk, 37, of Sonoma, Calif. “We’ve been talking about it for the past few years. Now that I’m getting close to 40, it’s now or never, basically.”

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I OCTOBER 2019

Delaying Home Ownership The American Dream of owning a home is also something that’s gone to the back burner while graduates pay off their student loans.

Szewczyk (pronounced “Chev-check”) says her problems started when she graduated from UCLA with a degree in linguistics and found she couldn’t get a decent-paying job. Although her debt was only $20,000 at the time, she decided on a career in electrical engineering and couldn’t even get into graduate school because she didn’t have the prerequisites.

So she returned to college, earning a second bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, and emerging with a new grand total of $120,000 in debt. Even while she’s shrewdly paid off principal on the highest interest loans and refinanced the others, she still finds herself in a financial bind.

“Saving for a down payment is tough when you have this debt looming over you,” Szewczyk says. Only in the past two years, when her loans reached a level manageable enough for her to make the minimum payments, has she been able to start putting money into retirement and save for a house in the super-expensive San Francisco Bay Area.

In a national survey of millennials age 22-35 in 2017, the National Association of Realtors and American Student Assistance, a nonprofit helping people finance their education, found that only 20 percent owned homes. Of those who hadn’t yet bought homes, 83 percent cited student loan debt as the factor delaying that purchase.

It’s easy to see why student loans are forcing young adults into major lifestyle changes: The cost of paying off the debt has exploded their budgets.

A survey conducted by Student Debt Crisis in 2018 found that 30 percent of respondents said their student loan bill was higher than their rent or mortgage.

More than twice that—65 percent—reported having less than $1,000 in their bank account. The same number said they spent more on paying down their student debt than they spent on food, and 56 percent said their loan payments outstrip the cost of their health insurance.

has a urden that b a is t b s, e f borrower “Student d o s e v li e pact on th serious im ortunities, p p o , s e ic o eir ch limiting th own lives,” ir e th r e v lo and contro e report. rs said in th e iz n a rg o - the survey

The vast majority of those surveyed—88 percent—said they struggle to make payments. Large numbers said student debt prevented them from saving for retirement (80 percent), making large purchases (59 percent), buying a home (56 percent) or even buying a car (42 percent).

Student Debt Crisis, an advocacy group, conducted the survey in 2018 on behalf of Summer, a social impact start-up focused on helping student loan borrowers successfully navigate the complex repayment process. They surveyed 7,095 adults with student loan debt from all 50 states within the US. Percent of adults with current outstanding student loan debt for their own education by age, 2018 15% TOTAL ADULTS AGED 18 to 29

34%

AGED 30 to 44 22% AGED 45 to 59 7% AGED 60-PLUS 1%

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve Board’s 2018 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I OCTOBER 2019

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young adults, they’re moving substantially less than used to be the case.”

That is surprising, Fry says, because the economy is in a prolonged recovery. “Many labor markets are pretty buoyant, but it’s still the case that mobility hasn’t picked up,” he says. “Student debt may be playing a role in that.”

Fry’s analysis of Census Bureau data found that “Americans are moving at the lowest rate on record” primarily because millennials are staying put. “In 2016, only 20 percent of 25- to 35-yearolds reported having lived at a different address one year earlier,” Fry wrote, compared to 26 percent of those in the same age group in both 1963 and 2000.

“

Americans

are moving at the

lowest rate on record

”

Majorities in the survey said they can’t save for a down payment (85 percent), don’t feel financially secure enough (74 percent) or can’t qualify for a mortgage because they run afoul of banks’ required debt-to-income ratios (52 percent).

They feel they won’t be able to buy a home for a median of seven years.

“I still live in a one-bedroom apartment with my husband,” Adrian Griffin says. “We were looking at houses four years ago, but housing prices have skyrocketed since then. To even get a loan, we would have qualified, but not for the best interest rate. Lenders look at your credit report, and I have a great score but I have all this debt.”

Moving Less Hand-in-hand with less home buying is a decrease in mobility rates. Millennials aren’t moving.

“Americans in general are moving less,” says Richard Fry, a senior economist with Pew Research.

“In some ways, that’s not surprising, because America is aging. But even looking at America’s

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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I OCTOBER 2019

The National Association of Realtors and American Student Assistance survey found that 42 percent of student loan borrowers delayed their move out of a family member’s home after college—with more than half of them staying put for at least two years.

Most commonly, 28 percent of respondents in the survey rent with roommates, while 30 percent live with family or friends—half paying rent, and half living rent-free.

Hitting the Disadvantaged Suzanne Martindale from Consumer Reports, who is working on reform proposals in state legislatures, says the people most heavily impacted are often those at the margins: immigrants, people of color, poor people, veterans and first-generation college students.

In many cases, those people aren’t aware of what they’re getting themselves into when they sign for their student loans.

“It is challenging enough to navigate the college process,” says Adrian Griffin, “let alone having to make multiple financial decisions that could potentially impact you for decades to come, especially for a family that did not have the luxury of saving up for a child’s tuition over the years.”

Your Chances of Surviving Middle Age Who will be there for your 50th high school reunion? very year for the next 13 years, millions of baby boomers will attend their 50th high school reunion—typically, when they’re 68-years-old.

What are the chances that the classmates they reconnected with at earlier reunions will make it to the big one?

It all depends. Your chances of surviving middle age depend on a whole host of factors that have something to do with biology and even more to do with money. You’ve heard this before. The rich live longer than the poor. But you probably haven’t seen it laid out in orderly tables of probabilities as it is in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of income and wealth disparities among adults aged 50 or older. Senator (and presidential contender) Bernie Sanders requested the study, and this summer the GAO delivered.

For the study, GAO researchers analyzed longitudinal Health and Retirement Study data. They determined how many of a representative sample of people born in 1931 through 1941 survived from 1992 (when they were aged 51 to 61) to 2014 (when they were aged 73 to 83). They found stark differences in the chances of making it through middle age by economic and demographic characteristic.

Differences by income: Based on estimates of mid-career earnings (household income at ages 41 through 50), the researchers divided respondents into five household income quintiles to determine the percentage of respondents in each quintile who were still alive 22 years later. Among those in the bottom quintile, only 52 percent had survived from 1992 to 2014. Among those in the top quintile, 74 percent were still kicking.

Differences by wealth: Wealth, like income, is linked to a longer life. The greater the wealth of respondents, the higher their chances of surviving middle age. Among those in the bottom quintile of wealth, only 47.6 percent survived the next two decades. Among those in the top quintile, 75.5 percent survived.

Differences by education: Education also determines how likely someone is to survive their fifties and sixties. Among those without a high school diploma, only 51 percent were alive 22 years later. Among those with a college degree, 75 percent had survived.

Differences by income and education: The gap in survivorship is widest when income and education are combined.

Among respondents in the bottom income quintile who did not have a college degree, only 50.2 percent survived from 1992 to 2014. Among those in the top income quintile who had a college degree, 80.5 percent survived.

Not surprisingly, the GAO study also found a big difference in survivorship by gender, with 69 percent of women surviving the 22-year time period versus 58 percent of men.

By race and Hispanic origin, Hispanics were most likely to survive middle age (67.5 percent), followed by non-Hispanic whites (64.5 percent), and blacks (51.7 percent).

Self-reported health status is a big predictor of making it through middle age. Among respondents who reported “excellent” health in 1992 when they were in their fifties, a substantial 78 percent survived into their seventies. Survivorship declined with each step down in self-reported health status. Seventy-three percent of those who reported “very good” health survived the next two decades. A smaller 60 percent of those who said their health was only “good” survived, 43 percent who reported “fair” health, and just 31 percent who said their health was “poor.”

With these facts in hand, you might be better prepared to face your classmates at your 50th high school reunion. Expect to see more women than men. Expect to see the exercise fanatics. And expect to see a preponderance of the most economically successful classmates. Those classmates aren’t there just to show off. They are the ones who survived middle age.

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I OCTOBER 2019

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The Rise and Fall of Household Spending on Guns A surprising look at America’s ownership habits espite the ongoing debate about guns in the United States, gun ownership has been declining.

Only 35 percent of Americans owned a gun in 2018, according to the General Social Survey (GSS). This is down from 50 percent or more in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Despite the fact that fewer Americans own guns, average household spending on guns has been soaring—until recently. The average household spent 99.6 percent more on guns in 2017 than in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. To put this increase into perspective, guns have been one of the fastest-growing items in the “entertainment” category of the Consumer Expenditure Survey, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Entertainment? Yes, the BLS includes spending on guns in the “hunting and fishing equipment” category, which is considered an entertainment expenditure. In case you’re wondering, hunting and fishing equipment is not the only questionable item under the entertainment umbrella. Pets is another one. While it seems strange to consider guns and pets as nothing more than entertainment, where else could you categorize them? They aren’t food, clothing, housing, or transportation, although guns can be used to obtain food and some pets can be used as transportation.

Anyway, back to the story. The average household doubled its spending on hunt-

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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I OCTOBER 2019

ing and fishing equipment between 2010 and 2017, after adjusting for inflation. Who was doing all this spending? To find out, take a look at the households most likely to own a gun—those headed by non-Hispanic whites. In 2018, 45 percent of non-Hispanic white households owned at least one gun.

This compares with just 7 percent of Asian households, 19 percent of Hispanic households, and 22 percent of black households.

Being non-Hispanic white is the single biggest demographic determinant of gun ownership—more important than gender, age, region, or education. Could it be that all those gun-owning non-Hispanic whites are hunters? Not according to the General Social Survey—only 23 percent of non-Hispanic white households say they hunt. Non-Hispanic whites also spend more on guns than any other demographic segment. In 2017, they spent twice as much as Hispanics and nearly four times more than blacks on hunting and fishing equipment.

But something happened in 2018. Gun spending dropped sharply. Average household spending on hunting and fishing equipment fell 25 percent between 2017 and 2018, after adjusting for inflation. Some are calling this decline the “Trump slump”—the consequence of having a pro-gun president in the White House. As Reuters explains it, the boom in spending on guns “corresponded largely with Democratic President Barack Obama’s time in office.” Fearing the government would take away their guns, the gun enthusiasts were stocking up.

Percent of households owning guns, by race and Hispanic origin of householder, 2018 35% Total households 7% Asian households 22% Black households 19% Hispanic households 45% Non-Hispanic white households Source: American Demographics’ analysis of the 2018 General Social Survey

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities tackles white identity in the US, Great Britain and other Western countries. The book, written

by Eric Kaufmann, a Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, is a thorough study of the demographic transformation that the white majority in these countries has been undergoing in the last century.

Demographers have long predicted that whites would no longer be the majority in the US by 2050.

As American Demographics observed in our September 2019 issue, the non-Hispanic white population in the US took a surprising dip in 2017 and 2018, according to the Census Bureau. Demographers had previously expected the non-Hispanic white population to increase every year through 2024, but it seems to have peaked eight years earlier than predicted. The minority share of the population is now expected to exceed non-Hispanic whites by 2045. In 1950, whites had just under 90 percent share of the population.

Demographic reasons behind the decline of the white majority include declining birth rates compared to non-white counterparts; more white deaths than white

births (white deaths now exceed births in 26 states) and immigration from non-European countries (Europe accounted for about 11% of the 44 million foreign-born population, down from 75% in 1960).

This shift, Kaufman explains in his book, has led to an insecurity among many whites about their place in society, and one of the symptoms has been anti-immigration sentiment.

The author used the phrase ”Whiteshift” and defines it as the “process by which white majorities absorb an admixture of different peoples through intermarriage, but remain oriented around existing myths of descent, symbols and traditions.”

But as mixed races become the majority of the country, Kaufmann contends that

the tendency of most people will be to “airbrush their polyglot lineage out of the story to focus on their European provenance.”

To illustrate how whites might handle the stress they are experiencing, Kauffman divides the rest of his book into four sections, each representing the four ways whites respond to ethnic change – fight, repress, flee, and join. Fight refers to the anti-immigration politics and populist right voting we’re currently seeing in America, the UK and elsewhere. Repress is about the impulse to repress opposition out of an anti-racist moralism. Flee covers the phenomenon of white flight.

Finally, there is Join, a process of interracial friendship and intermarriage, something that more commonly happens in more diverse areas of the country such as metro areas. Kauffman sees intermarriage as the long-run key that promises to erode the rising diversity which underlies our current malaise.”

AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I OCTOBER 2019

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Month by Month at a Glance

AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS The Real Cost of Student Debt Living

(October)

with Surging Waters (September)

Meet the Henrys (November)

Retail Reality (Summer)

Gen Z: Listening to the Footsteps (December)

Let American Demographics be your umbrella against the uncertainties of tomorrow’s raindrops.

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