By SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The success of minority children who will form a new majority in the United States is crucial to future U.S. economic competitiveness.
A wave of immigration, the aging of non-Hispanic white women beyond childbearing years and a new baby boom are diminishing the proportion of children who are white. Already, half of U.S. children younger than 1 are Hispanic, black, Asian, Native American or of mixed races.
"A lot of people think demographics alone will bring about change, and it won't," said Gail Christopher, who heads the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's America Healing project on racial equity. "If attitudes and behaviors don't change, demographics will just mean we'll have a majority population that is low-income, improperly educated, disproportionately incarcerated with greater health disparities."
In 2010, 39.4 percent of black children, 34 percent of Hispanic children and 38 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native children lived in poverty, defined as an annual income of $22,113 that year for a family of four. That compares with about 18 percent of white, non-Hispanic children, according to the Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey.
Asian children overall fare better, with 13.5 percent living in poverty, the survey said.
The overrepresentation of minority children among the poor is not new. What is new is that minority children will, in the not-too-distant future, form the core of the nation's workforce, and their taxes will be depended upon to keep solvent entitlement programs for the elderly.
Based on where things stand for nonwhite children today, it's not hard to make some educated guesses about what the future holds for the youngest of America's children who already are a majority of their age group, said Sam Fulwood III, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.