A few weeks ago, I took a dive into some of the data available from the numerous repositories at the CDC WONDER web site. Having a professional background in data processing and a personal love for data analysis, I thought I was going to explore some of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic here in the USA that might not be readily apparent or getting proper public attention. As I was rooting around through megabytes of data downloaded (laboriously at times) from the CDC site and loaded into a MariaDB database, I stumbled on something that acted like a squirrel to me. So, naturally, I chased it.
The nature of the squirrel in this case was data that reminded me of what some here might call demographic Fitzmas. Those paying attention to such things are aware of the meme that suggests demographic changes within America will eventually lead of major political upheaval. For many, though, they always seem to be just around the corner.
Well, some of my ruminations and explorations eventually led to the creation of the following chart.
Without a little explanation, this would just look like technical gibberish (and maybe it still will even with that explanation). You see, CDC keeps track of data indicating the underlying cause of death for every death recorded in America, and has been doing so for decades. One of their data sources allowed me to extract data for each year from 1999 to 2020, showing total deaths and total estimated population for each of those years. Another extract provided the number of infants under the age of 1 for each of those years. And the neat thing is: that data is available broken down by Race and Ethnicity (among other demographic markers). Putting the results of the extracts together, I could create a table showing the total population, total deaths,, and total population under the age of 1, broken down by year and by what I call Origin (a combination of Race and Ethnicity values).
That table itself was decidedly uninteresting, since the size of the White Origin (White race and Non-Hispanic ethnicity) numbers dwarfed most of the numbers for the others. After thinking a bit, I decided to see if there might be a trend in these numbers. Sure enough, the trend is easily discernible in the chart shown above. The data points do not represent the raw national totals, but rather the percent of the national totals associated with each Origin (with PoC being an aggregation of all non-White values.
The top 3 lines (light blue) in the chart represent these percentage values for people of White Origin, with the top line representing %age of deaths, the 2nd line representing %age of total population and the 3rd line representing %age of total infant population. The next 3 lines (green) represent these percentage values for PoC (all non-Whites for purposes of this analysis). They are a mirror flip of the top 3 lines.
Of interest to me, the gap between white deaths and white population decreased noticeably in 2020, but still shows that whites are incurring a level of deaths well in excess of their share of the total population. Also, the number of infants is almost equal between Whites and PoC, probably due to the different age profiles of Whites and PoC.
The actual trends of the component populations comprising the PoC grouping may themselves be of interest to many, but they are not relevant to the main thrust of this diary.
When I first saw this chart, it caught my eye that the White share of the total population has decreased almost 10% from 1999, dropping from just over 70% to just over 60% in just 21 years. That got me thinking: hmm, how might this trend play out in the years to come.
Fortunately, CDC had the data to allow a look into that as well. They just happen to have a data source created in 2014 showing projected populations, births and deaths by ethnicity (or by race, but not both). That data led to the creation of the chart at the top of the diary (and reproduced below).
It represents the projected population changes due to births, deaths and migration for each year, broken down by ethnicity. I should add that, due to being constrained to either race or ethnicity data for these projections, the NonHisp data points shown above include data for the significant non-Hispanic Black, AIAN and API population groups. If these groups were represented with Hispanics in PoC data points rather than NonHisp the NonHisp data points, the trends would show an even faster decline in the dominance of the White population majority.
I added the orange line to show the net Hispanic population gain per year when taking all these data values into consideration. That orange line indicates that the recent slow rate of change in population balance between these to groups is about to take off later this decade, peaking at a net relative Hispanic gain of roughly one million people each year in the mid 2040s. Again, if the data could produce White and PoC data points, the trends would look even more favourable for PoC.
So, again, I asked myself how this will affect the total population levels in the years ahead. Again, CDC to the rescue. Another data source allowed me to get total population projections by Origin (again, my term) for each year up to 2060. From that data comes the chart shown below.
It shows the White population essentially flat-lining at current levels until the mid 2030s, then beginning a slow decline into the years beyond. On the other hand, the total national population is expected to about 400 million by the early 2050s, and continue growing in the years beyond. That population growth is expected to be driven by (natch) PoC. Hispanics should provide about half the projected growth up to 2060, with other groups splitting the balance.
What does all this mean?
If this scenario is at all close to how things will unfold, the GOP is in deep doo doo. The nation as a whole could be majority-minority by 2044. Ergo, an attempted coup, extreme vote suppression measures and legislation put forward in numerous states to allow State legislatures to override / disregard the actual ballot counts in future elections.
We all should be afraid, not of the trends shown above, but of the extents to which the GOP will further debase themselves in response to what is likely to happen to the national population mix.
I look forward to your comments!