O.A.T.H.

Executive Summary

If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to
438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be
due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants,
according to new projections developed by the Pew Research Center.

Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the
effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50
million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.

Among the other key population projections:

• Nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be an immigrant in 2050,
compared with one in eight (12%) in 2005. By 2025, the immigrant, or
foreign-born, share of the population will surpass the peak during the last
great wave of immigration a century ago.

• The major role of immigration in national growth builds on the pattern of
recent decades, during which immigrants and their U.S.-born children and
grandchildren accounted for most population increase. Immigration’s
importance increased as the average number of births to U.S.-born women
dropped sharply before leveling off. 

• The Latino population, already the nation’s largest minority group, will
triple in size and will account for most of the nation’s population growth
from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S.
population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005.

• Births in the United States will play a growing role in Hispanic and Asian
population growth; as a result, a smaller proportion of both groups will be
foreign-born in 2050 than is the case now.

• The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other
racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.

• The nation’s elderly population will more than double in size from 2005
through 2050, as the baby-boom generation enters the traditional
retirement years.  The number of working-age Americans and children
will grow more slowly than the elderly population, and will shrink as a
share of the total population.

The Center’s projections are based on detailed assumptions about births, deaths
and immigration levels—the three key components of population change. All
these assumptions are built on recent trends. But it is important to note that these
trends can change. All population projections have inherent uncertainties,
especially for years further in the future, because they can be affected by changes
in behavior, by new immigration policies, or by other events. Nonetheless,
projections offer a starting point for understanding and analyzing the parameters
of future demographic change.  

The Center’s report includes an analysis of the nation’s future “dependency
ratio”—the number of children and elderly compared with the number of
working-age Americans. There were 59 children and elderly people per 100 adults
of working age in 2005. That will rise to 72 dependents per 100 adults of working
age in 2050.

The report also offers two alternative population projections, one based on lower
immigration assumptions and one based on higher immigration assumptions.