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Title: Minorities in majority in 43 Texas counties, leading U.S. trend
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URL Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/conte ... /local/08/09/0809counties.html
Published: Aug 10, 2007
Author: Bob Dart
Post Date: 2007-08-10 11:33:18 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 69
Comments: 3
Central Texas counties not yet following trend
WASHINGTON — Leading a national trend, Texas has 43 counties — the most of any state — that are "majority-minority," with non-Hispanic white residents outnumbered by African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and other racial and ethnic groups, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
Starr County, on the border with Mexico, has a "minority" population of 98 percent, the highest of any county in the country.
Nearly one in every 10 of the nation's 3,141 counties has a population that is more than half minority. In 2006, eight counties that had not previously been majority-minority pushed the national total to 303, the Census Bureau reported.
Two of those counties in which the majority previously was non-Hispanic white were in Texas. Waller County moved to 50.3 percent minority from 49.8 percent in 2005; Wharton County went from 49.5 percent to 50.09 percent minority. Both are in Southeast Texas, west of Houston.
Nationwide, the largest jurisdictions passing the threshold between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006, were Denver County, Colo., and East Baton Rouge Parish, La.
In painting its statistical portrait, the Census Bureau sketched other interesting characteristics of Texas, which has 254 counties, the most of any state. Among these are counties with some of the nation's oldest and youngest populations.
In Llano County, for instance, 29.6 percent of the residents in 2006 were older than 65. That ranks sixth among counties with the highest proportion of the populace older than the traditional retirement milestone.
In Denton County, only 5.5 percent of the residents were older than 65. That puts it eighth on the national list of counties with the lowest percent of the population over the age of 65.
Webb County, along the border and home to Laredo, had the highest proportion of residents younger than 5, 13.1 percent. In fact, three of the nation's top 10 counties with the highest percentage of such young children are in Texas: Starr County ranks fourth with 12.2 percent of residents younger than 5; Hidalgo County ranks sixth with 11.8 percent.
Starr County also had the highest proportion of Hispanic people in its population, 97 percent.
Los Angeles County, Calif., had the largest minority population: 7 million, or 71 percent of its total. The county is home to one in 14 of the nation's minority residents.
In Texas, Harris County gained 121,400 minority residents between 2005 and 2006, which led the nation in growth. With Houston as its largest city, Harris County had a minority population of 2.5 million in 2006, 63 percent of its total.
Travis, Williamson and Hays counties are not majority-minority, and the breakdowns have not changed much from 2005 to 2006, census data show.
Travis in 2005 was 52.8 percent non-Hispanic white and 47.2 percent minority; in 2006, the county was 47.8 percent minority, according to Greg Harper, a demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau.
Williamson was about 31 percent and 32 percent minority in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Hays was almost 38 percent minority in both years.
The population growth of Travis, Williamson and Hays has been driven by domestic migration — moves from other parts of the U.S. — and the majority of this migration involves white people, state demographer Steve Murdock said. Generally, however, the growth of the Hispanic population is "a pervasive phenomenon" across the state, Murdock said.
Though Travis had not reached majority-minority level, Austin city demographer Ryan Robinson says the city has been majority-minority since 2004. He estimates that the city is 47.5 percent white this year.
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#1. To: christine (#0)
We sent a member of our Reptilian subgroup to D.C. to be President. His successor, Perry, has also proven to be rather cold-blooded. As I always say, Rick Perry is the first — and, with any luck at all and if God is merciful, he will be the last — graduate of Texas A&M University to be elected governor. If God is just, Perry will probably wind up president himself and turn what's left of America into an unfunny Aggie joke.
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#2. To: ghostdogtxn (#1)
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