Each month a new map is presented to the Commission to help explain important trends in the Bay Area, across the nation and around the world. These custom-crafted maps are prepared by MTC’s Data & Visualization team.
U.S. White Population Growth Rate, 1790-2020
This month’s Map of the Month highlights an absolute decline in the nation’s white non-Hispanic population—accelerating a phenomenon that was not projected to occur until the next decade. America’s white population saw increases between 1790 when the first census was taken until 1960 when the population growth began to decline. According to numbers released by the Census in 2017, the nation experienced an absolute decline of about 9,000 whites between 2015 and 2016 and more than 31,000 whites between 2016 and 2017. Using a simple linear projection, we could expect to see a continued decline in white population of anywhere between 17,000 and 20,000 people from 2017 to the next decennial census in 2020.