Population growth in the US:
One of the most striking findings to emerge so far is the accelerated pace at which these changes are taking place. For the first time in the 20th century, all states gained population. Moreover, the population gain over the ten years ending in 2000 was the largest in the nation's history. The previous record took place between 1950 and 1960 during the baby boom. The rate at which our population is becoming more diverse is also accelerating (see chart). The degree of racial and ethnic change between 1990 and 2000 is greater than that which took place between 1980 and 1990.
Far from just demographic trivia, these changes underlie the fundamentals that drive the U.S. consumer market, about two-thirds of the economy. It is no accident that major cosmetic lines created new products in a broader range of shades in the late 1990s. Housing, too, will change because the way we come together to form households is changing. Minority households tend to be younger, have more children and are more likely to include multiple generations than majority households. All of these factors change the types of housing that consumers are likely to demand.
Immigration is a key driver in these changes, both in making population growth larger than anticipated and in increasing the diversity of the population. While California, Texas, New York and Florida have long been immigration magnets and thus had particularly diverse populations, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado, Nevada, Maryland, Delaware, Nebraska, and Georgia also have rapidly diversifying populations. Tight labor markets that have drawn on labor pools that were previously underutilized and that have made employers increasingly turn to foreign workers have played a role. Technological change that allows some types of industry to become footloose and thus created labor demand in new pockets of the economy is another factor.
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