Demographic landscape shifts across United States - USATODAY.com: White populations have declined in more than half of the USA's counties since 2000, helping fuel a rise in the number of communities where minorities are now the majority, an analysis of 2007 Census estimates released today shows.
The data reflect how immigration, a population boom among Hispanics and the slowing growth of an aging population of whites are reshaping the nation's demographic landscape.
Among large counties, San Francisco lost the highest percentage of whites — which the analysis defined as people who are not Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian or Native Hawaiian — with that group dropping 17% from 2000 to 2007. Cook County, Ill., home of Chicago, had the biggest numerical decline, losing 215,535 whites during the same period.
Minorities made up more than half the population in 302 of the nation's 3,141 counties last year. Most such areas in the early 1990s were centered in established metropolitan areas and border cities in the Southwest.
