Population Growth Slows for Asians and Hispanics

"[B]irths outnumber deaths among Hispanic people by 10 to 1, and the nation's racial and ethnic minorities are poised to become a majority among children under 5. They inched up from 46.7 percent of those children on July 1, 2007, to 47.3 percent last July 1.

The latest census estimates found that the minority population - other than non-Hispanic whites - grew by 2.3 percent from July 1, 2007, to July 1, 2008, compared with 2.4 percent the year before.

Ethnic and racial minorities (mostly blacks, Hispanic and Asian people) now account for 34 percent of the nation's population.

The Hispanic population grew by 3.2 percent and Asians by 2.7 percent, a slight decrease from the year before. But those figures were down sharply from the beginning of the decade, when the Hispanic population grew by 4 percent and Asians by 3.7 percent, according to an analysis by the Population Reference Bureau, a private research group."