New Pew Research Center Report: Foreign-Born % of Population to Increase, Latina/o Population to Triple in Size by 2050

February 11, 2008

The Pew Research Center estimates that sometime between 2020 and 2025, the foreign-born will account for 15 percent of the American population, or more than 1 in 7 residents. They represented about 12 percent of the population in 2005, 14.7 percent in 1910 and about 15 percent in the late 19th century. The N.Y. Times analyzes the report at here.

According to the Pew report, if current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants. Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren. Among the other key population projections:

Nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be an immigrant in 2050, compared with one in eight (12%) 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.

The major role of immigration in national growth builds on the pattern of recent decades, during which immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren accounted for most population increase. Immigration’s importance increased as the average number of births to U.S.-born women dropped sharply before leveling off.

The Latino population, already the nation’s largest minority group, will triple in size and will account for most of the nation’s population growth from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S. population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005.

Births in the United States will play a growing role in Hispanic and Asian population growth; as a result, a smaller proportion of both groups will be foreign-born in 2050 than is the case now.

The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.

The nation’s elderly population will more than double in size from 2005 through 2050, as the baby boom generation enters the traditional retirement years.

The number of working-age Americans and children will grow more slowly than the elderly population, and will shrink as a share of the total population.