Census: Immigration Will Be Main Driver Of U.S. Population Growth

By Adrian Florido
May 21, 2013

New data from the Census Bureau projects that immigration will be the main driver of United States population growth sometime between 2027 and 2038, surpassing births on U.S. soil.

Getty Images
A woman takes the oath of allegiance during a naturalization ceremony at the district office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Newark, N.J.

Exactly when that will happen is hard to pin down, because so much depends on immigration policy and global economics.

But assuming it does happen, it’ll be the first time since at least 1850, when the Census started collecting information about where U.S. residents were born.

In a statement, a senior adviser at the Census Bureau said the expected milestone reflects the impact of continued immigration on the nation’s demographics, but also the aging of baby boomers and declining fertility rates.

The new Census data also projects that non-Hispanic whites will be less than half the population by 2043. For children, that will happen much sooner. The majority of the population under 18 is projected to be non-white by 2019.