Dying Whites, Continued

At the University of Wisconsin's Applied Population Lab, Rogelio Sáenz and Kenneth M. Johnson have a Census data brief titled "White Deaths Exceed Births in a Majority of U.S. States."

In 2016, more non-Hispanic whites died than were born in twenty-six states; more than at any time in U.S. history. Some 179 million residents or roughly 56 percent of the U.S. population, lived in these 26 states In contrast, non-Hispanic white (hereafter referred to as white) deaths exceeded births in just four states in 2004 and seventeen as recently as 2014. White deaths also exceeded white births in the nation as a whole for the first time in U.S. history in 2016, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. When births fail to keep pace with deaths, a region is said to have a "natural decrease" in population, which can only be offset by migration gains. In seventeen of the twenty-six states with white natural decreases, the white population diminished overall between 2015 and 2016. Our analysis of the demographic factors that cause white natural decrease suggests that more states are likely to experience it in the future.