This is why the 21st century will is unlikely to be an “American century”.
The latest 2010 census data show that children of immigrants make up one in four people under 18, and are now the fastest-growing segment of the nation’s youth, an indication that both legal and illegal immigrants as well as minority births are lifting the nation’s population.
Currently, the share of children in the U.S. is 24 percent, falling below the previous low of 26 percent of 1990. The share is projected to slip further, to 23 percent by 2050, even as the percentage of people 65 and older is expected to jump from 13 percent today to roughly 20 percent by 2050 due to the aging of baby boomers and beyond.
In 1900, the share of children reached as high as 40 percent, compared to a much smaller 4 percent share for seniors 65 and older. The percentage of children in subsequent decades held above 30 percent until 1980, when it fell to 28 percent amid declining birth rates, mostly among whites.
So, thanks to the late and unlamented Irish-American senator and an English Jew’s ideal of “the melting pot”, the USA is about to discover what happens when a young population of European descent is exchanged for an old population of half-European, one-sixth African, one-third Mestizo descent.
Even if you genuinely subscribe to the theory of multicultural vibrancy and strength through diversity, I would imagine you have to be at least a bit concerned about the probable outcomes here.