Demographic landscape shifts across United States

White populations have declined in more than half of the USA's counties since 2000, helping fuel a rise in the number of communities where minorities are now the majority, an analysis of 2007 Census estimates released today shows.

The data reflect how immigration, a population boom among Hispanics and the slowing growth of an aging population of whites are reshaping the nation's demographic landscape.

Cook County, Ill., home of Chicago, had the biggest numerical decline in whites, losing 215,535 between 2000 and 2007, according to Census estimates.

Minorities made up more than half the population in 302 of the nation's 3,141 counties last year. Most such areas in the early 1990s were centered in established metropolitan areas and border cities in the Southwest.

Now, counties where minorities are a majority are popping up "all over the place," not just in areas where immigrants traditionally first settled, says William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer. A continuing migration of African Americans to the South also is furthering this trend, he adds. …