US Population Diversifying, as Number of Whites Declines for First Time

The United States is growing more racially diverse as the white population declined over the past decade for the first time in the country's history, a new detailed look at the 2020 Census shows.  

The Census Bureau said Thursday that its once-a-decade head count showed 331.4 million people living in the U.S. last year, up just 7.4% since 2010. It was the slowest growth in any decade since the census was started in 1790, except during the Great Depression in the 1930s.   But the racial and ethnic makeup of the country was changing; people were moving more frequently to metropolitan areas, often to the Southern and Western states; and Americans were often leaving smaller communities, further diminishing their populations.   People identifying as white remained the largest population group in the U.S. — 204.3 million — but the total was down 8.6% from 2010.