By Chris Hoenig
For the first time in more than a century, 2012 brought more deaths than births among non-Hispanic whites in the United States. While the difference was small—only about 12,000 out of a population of more than 200 million—it marks the start of a trend that is only supposed to pick up steam as the country’s population ages.
The number of children in the U.S. dropped by 200,000 to 73.7 million, according to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. At the same time, the 65-and-older population grew by 4.3 percent to 43.1 million, or 13.7 percent of the total population. As the more-deaths-than-births trend continues, it’s expected that the number of non-Hispanic whites will begin to decline by the end of the decade. Only the emigration of 188,000 whites from overseas kept that from happening in 2012.
