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(White) America is getting older Everyone is getting older, of course, but most older Americans are White
Washington Post ^ | June 22, 2023 | Philip Bump

Posted on 06/27/2023 3:33:55 PM PDT by Conservat1

A news release from the Census Bureau published on Thursday morning summarized three-quarters of a century of American history succinctly. It was titled, “America Is Getting Older.”

This is the Census Bureau, so the assertion was backed up with data. The median age in the U.S. rose to 38.9 years in 2022, up 0.2 years from 2021. Over the past year, 46 states saw increases in their median ages. Four states (and D.C.) saw no change.

This isn’t surprising but is, instead, a continuation of a long-standing trend. But there is an important detail that’s easy to overlook here: The increase in age is largely a function of White Americans getting older — a distinction that itself helps explain an awful lot about American culture and politics in the moment.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aging; america; babyboomers; census
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In January, my book “The Aftermath” was published. It looks at precisely this issue, how the aging of the population overlaps with the tensions the country is experiencing. The subtitle of the book is “The Last Days of the baby boom and the Future of Power in America,” crystallizing a central point here. America is getting older because the massive baby boom is getting older, and White America is at the center of that aging process because the baby boom was so heavily White.

To distill some big chunks of the book fairly quickly, it’s useful to understand how unusually large the baby boom was relative to the population. There were about 140 million Americans in 1945, before the boom started. Over the next 19 years, it’s estimated that nearly 76 million babies were born. That’s a huge increase in the population — but also one contained within a narrow age range.

The baby boom lasted from 1946 to 1964, according to the Census Bureau, making baby boomers aged 58 to 76 last year. Why has there been so much attention paid to Social Security and Medicare of late? Well, the year with the most births during the boom was 1957. Add the traditional retirement age of 65 to 1957 and you get … 2022.

At the same time, the boom began in a period when immigration was constrained. It wasn’t until after the boom ended that immigration laws were liberalized, leading to an increase in residents from Asia, Mexico and Central America. In 1970, about 84 percent of the country was non-Hispanic White, compared to 59 percent in 2022. (In 1970, the median age was just over 28.)

I’ll interject here to note that even these racial delineations are murkier than they seem. Our understanding of race in the U.S. is dependent upon how race is measured by the Census Bureau and others, and that data collection has traditionally been heavily oversimplified. We use the descriptor “non-Hispanic White” because the federal government still categorizes “Hispanic” as an ethnicity instead of a race, but even with that level of complexity we still generally use too-narrow categorizations. It is the case both that America is currently more diverse than the top-line numbers would suggest and that the increase in diversity projected for the future is probably overstated — but I’ll leave the explanation for that to the book.

A few years ago, the Census Bureau released data showing the age of Americans by race. At that point, the most common age for a White American was 58. The most common age for a non-White American — Black, Hispanic, Asian, mixed-race, etc. — was 27. For Hispanics, the most common age was 11.

Using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey compiled by IPUMS, we can approximate a similar chart for the year 2022. What you’ll notice is that the White population curve is skewed significantly to the right, while the curves for other population groups is either larger at younger ages or relatively flat.

This data suggests that most White residents of the U.S. are older than the country’s median age, while most Asian, Black and Hispanic residents are younger than it. Whites make up 52 percent of the population under the median age — and two-thirds of the population over it.

It’s easy to see how this percolates into the political and cultural conversations. We have a heavily White older population that is competing for power and resources — like funding for schools or senior centers — with a more-diverse younger population. We have a partisan divide that overlaps with the age divide. We have explicit and implicit political appeals that center on the country’s changed demography.

It’s important that America is aging as the baby boom gets older. It’s important, too, that we recognize how this aging is lopsidedly a function of one demographic group — a group that votes more heavily and (relative to younger people) more heavily Republican.

There’s an interesting footnote to the new Census Bureau data. The White population in the U.S. would have declined last year, but for one factor: immigration.

1 posted on 06/27/2023 3:33:55 PM PDT by Conservat1
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To: Conservat1

Wake up people. See how giddy the ComPost is reporting this? There are dozens of these types of articles. How it’s good the US is becoming a Latino nation, why white couples need to adopt dogs and not have children.


2 posted on 06/27/2023 3:35:35 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
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To: Conservat1

Not too surprising. Most blacks and many illegals never make it past middle age just due to gunfights alone.


3 posted on 06/27/2023 3:38:51 PM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Federal-run medical care is as good as state-run DMVs.)
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If there are no more countries with wypipo, what countries will then be left for people to escape to?


4 posted on 06/27/2023 3:39:48 PM PDT by dsrtsage ( Complexity is just simple lacking imagination)
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To: the OlLine Rebel

Exactly, white folks have less of a tendency to gun each other down in drive-byes.


5 posted on 06/27/2023 3:40:57 PM PDT by Dave911
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

Yeah, I’ve seen this direction coming for decades.

I had a friend in the late 90s and early 2000s who stated
they were going to try to turn the U. S. into South Africa.

At the time, I thought this person may have been overplaying
things a bit. How could they do that, with such a vast
majority of the nation being White?

At the time the African American slice was about 10%.

Well, here we are and look how Blacks are everywhere you
look, and Whites are almost invisible.

When you do see a White person on television, about 75%
of the time they are coupled with a Black person, if
they are in a relationship.

Something’s up.


6 posted on 06/27/2023 3:41:55 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the USofA & to the Constitutional REPUBLIC for which it stands.)
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To: All

Blacks tend to have a shorter lives than White people, not sure about “latino” (whatever that means).


7 posted on 06/27/2023 3:42:03 PM PDT by escapefromboston (Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.)
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To: dsrtsage

Idiocracy will have set in bigly. At the best.


8 posted on 06/27/2023 3:42:06 PM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Federal-run medical care is as good as state-run DMVs.)
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To: Conservat1

Lifestyle choices.


9 posted on 06/27/2023 3:43:48 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: Conservat1

I feel it in my joints and aching muscles every day. But when this old Marine and his generation fades away, then what?


10 posted on 06/27/2023 3:44:07 PM PDT by iontheball
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To: Conservat1

” . . . most older Americans are White.”

Gosh, I wonder if that’s got anything to do with the fact that 50 years ago most younger Americans were White.


11 posted on 06/27/2023 3:49:22 PM PDT by Stosh
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To: DoughtyOne

Pat Buchanan called it 2 decades or so ago with his book Death of the West.

Traditional Americans are being replaced, despite what shit-for-brains says.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-biden-hosts-asian-american-native-hawaiian-and-pacific-islander-heritage-month-event


12 posted on 06/27/2023 3:49:43 PM PDT by Phoenix8
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To: Dave911; the OlLine Rebel
Exactly, white folks have less of a tendency to gun each other down in drive-byes.

There's that, but perhaps even more importantly are birth rates. Not only are blacks making more babies per woman (on average), they're starting at earlier ages (on average).

IIRC, the average white person's age is 50-something and the average black person's age is 20-something.

The age difference brings with it a whole host of things the left touts as "disparity". For example, maybe age difference is one reason for the difference in incomes (I make a lot more in my 50's than I did in my 20's, as does just about everybody else, but my race didn't change from my 20's to my 50's.) And maybe it helps explain crime rates and lock-up rates (lot's of people who did stupid stuff in their young adult years don't do as much of it in their 50's). And tendency to vote Dim (maybe part of the popularity of Dims among blacks is from Dims being popular among young adults). We could go on and on listing how different behavior rates and experiences among the races are, perhaps, at least somewhat pushed by differences in ages.

13 posted on 06/27/2023 3:50:36 PM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Phoenix8

Yes he did.

This brave new world is going to result in exactly what the
WEF wants it to.

In the absence of the traditional US, China is going to
destabilize the planet.

How does the WEF plan on handling that once China has
absolute control, and their necks are on the plate?


14 posted on 06/27/2023 3:52:52 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the USofA & to the Constitutional REPUBLIC for which it stands.)
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To: Conservat1

White people go to the doctors.

Old white people usually mostly do what their doctors say.

Older white people generally have families that will take care of them.

Once Hispanics get through their second generation…they will live long as well. Their family units tend to be pretty strong.


15 posted on 06/27/2023 3:53:51 PM PDT by Vermont Lt
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To: Stosh

Most baby boomers = white.


16 posted on 06/27/2023 3:54:24 PM PDT by Conservat1
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To: the OlLine Rebel

“Most”? Die in gunfights?

What a ludicrous statement.


17 posted on 06/27/2023 3:54:54 PM PDT by Vermont Lt
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To: Tell It Right

And most of these black babies are born into mother-only “families”. And the mothers get paid by the U.S. government for every fatherless kid they have. And these fatherless children grow up to be criminals which allows the government to grow even bigger as it pretends to fight the crime. A perpetual motion machine for big government - by design.


18 posted on 06/27/2023 3:55:28 PM PDT by 21twelve (Ever Vigilant. Never Fearful.)
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To: Conservat1

Benjamin Button begs to differ.


19 posted on 06/27/2023 3:55:33 PM PDT by x
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

The entire article is based on a faulty premise to begin with-Latino/Hispanic is NOT a RACE, damnit-it is an Ethnic group -people whose Spanish-speaking ancestors came to the New World in the 15th-16th centuries from Spain-and Portugal-how hard is that to understand? And most of us are Caucasian as well-I’m one of them-the people who write this crap are just terminally stupid/tonto/estupido...

And what about bi-racial adults over 60, etc-lots of those even in this rural area-most of them look/identify as more Caucasian than Black or Asian, because they are-the ComPost is promoting a faulty narrative in more ways than one...


20 posted on 06/27/2023 4:06:16 PM PDT by Texan5 ("You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to draw a hard line"...)
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