Babies born to white mothers now minority, Hofstra study finds

Babies born to white, non-Hispanic mothers are now a minority nationwide for the first time, according to a study by Hofstra University and Northwell Health researchers published Friday.

The change reflects the nation’s aging and declining white population and growing Latino and Asian populations amid Census Bureau projections that the overall population will be majority nonwhite by 2050.

“This is who we are as a nation,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution who was not involved with the report.

The peer-reviewed study in JAMA Network Open, which is an analysis of federal birth certificate data, found that the share of babies born to white, non-Hispanic mothers fell from 52.6% in 2016 to 49.6% in 2024. The percentage born to Black mothers also decreased, and there was a slight drop in the share of Asian newborns. At the same time, the proportion born to Latinas rose from 23.5% to 27.4%.

Long Island data was not available.

Nationwide, the overall number of births fell — but much more among whites than any other group.

“The white population is older, and it means, proportionally over time, fewer women are in their childbearing ages,” Frey said.

The Census Bureau announced more than a decade ago that a majority of babies younger than 1 year old were nonwhite. The Census Bureau calculates babies' demographics differently, said Dr. Amos Grünebaum, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and co-author of the study. It uses the father’s race and ethnicity in addition to the mother's; Hofstra/Northwell and the National Center for Health Statistics uses only the mother’s, he said.

White women tend to have fewer children, Grünebaum said.

The birth rate in 2024 for whites ages 15-44 was 51.7, compared with 66.1 for Hispanics, according to an April National Center for Health Statistics report. Black and Asian birth rates were roughly similar to the rates for whites.

Immigrants are on average younger than the overall population, and that’s one reason for the higher Hispanic birth rate, Frey said. But, he said, “even if we had zero immigration, we’d become more racially diverse, especially among our younger populations.”

A report from the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center that examined births between 2000 and 2018 found that immigration was not the main reason for why a higher percentage of babies were born to Latina women.

“The share of births to Hispanic mothers was driven by an increase in births among Hispanic mothers born in the U.S.,” said Jake Hays, a Pew research associate focusing on social and demographic trends.

With white birth rates so low, and the white population graying, the higher birth rates among Hispanics benefit older Americans in the long term by ensuring there is continued economic growth and enough workers to take care of older residents, Frey said.

Older people are “going to be dependent on that labor force, not only for Social Security and Medicare, but just generally making ourselves a productive nation,” he said.

Otherwise, he said, “we’ll be like Japan or Italy,” countries grappling with the consequences of low birth rates.

Japan’s prime minister in 2023 said the country was “standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society” because of the low birth rates. International Monetary Fund researchers found that an aging population reduces productivity growth.

Some conservatives, including Vice President JD Vance, have called for Americans to have more children, saying that the country’s declining birth rate is an economic and social problem.

With a large number of babies now born to immigrant women, there is a greater need for hospital staff who speak the languages of the new mothers, Grünebaum said.

“When people deliver in hospitals and they don't understand the language, their outcomes will automatically be not as good,” he said.

The white birth percentage dipped below 50% in 2023 or 2024. It’s unclear which year because of incomplete data, Grünebaum said. In about 1% of births, it was not reported whether the mother was Hispanic or not, according to an email Friday from the National Center for Health Statistics.

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com@DavidOlson11

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.