In 2024, for the first time in American history, more than half of all babies born in the United States were born to minority mothers. Births to Latino, Black, Asian, multiracial, and other racial and ethnic groups reached 50.4% of all U.S. births, according to a new analysis in JAMA Network Open that examined more than 33 million live births between 2016 and 2024. Births to non-Latino White mothers fell to 49.6%.

America turned 250 this year. It is the same country where, by 1790, 694,207 people were held in bondage, bought, sold, and worked without pay to build the economy now being celebrated. The same country where, by 1860, nearly 4 million people were enslaved on the same soil that had, in 1776, declared all men created equal. The same country where federal troops were required to enroll two Black students at the University of Alabama as late as 1963. One birth at a time, that country is changing.

The question is what the change actually looks like.

Behind the Numbers

The shift has been gradual. Latino births showed the largest increase, rising from 23.5% of total U.S. births in 2016 to 27.4% in 2024, per the JAMA Network Open study. Researchers attribute the growth primarily to a younger Latino childbearing population and continued immigration patterns, with White Americans tending to delay childbirth, per Forbes.

However, the population math extends beyond birth rates. Between 2018 and 2024, Latinos added 4.6 million people to their population, according to researchers at UCLA and California Lutheran University. During that same period, the non-Latino White population contracted by 3.3 million. The Latino natural population increase — births minus deaths — averaged more than 657,000 per year over that period.

Put into perspective, Latino history on this land runs far deeper than the immigration story most Americans default to. It runs through the Indigenous civilizations that preceded European colonizers — the Pueblo, Aztec, and Maya. Through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ceded to the United States California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, Mexicans already living on that land spent the following decades losing their property, their political standing, and their cultural practices. The Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, led by Dolores Huerta, built one of the first successful farm worker labor unions in American history and extracted basic labor protections through years of organizing. Huerta’s “Sí se puede” became one of the most recognized civil rights rallying cries in the country.

What $4.4 Trillion Looks Like

In 2024, the U.S. Latino GDP reached $4.4 trillion, the equivalent of the world’s fourth-largest economy, outpacing Japan. Since COVID-19, the Latino GDP has grown faster than that of India and China. Latino labor force participation grew 5.5% in 2024, the single strongest growth on record.

“The major economies that our nation competes with — China, Germany, Japan — all have negative labor force growth,” said UCLA epidemiologist Paul Hsu. “Only the U.S. sees positive labor force growth, and that growth comes primarily from the Latino population.”

The gains run through education and business as well. The number of Latinos with a bachelor’s degree or higher more than doubled between 2010 and 2024, growing 3.2 times faster than non-Latinos, according to UCLA. Latino-owned businesses grew nearly seven times faster than non-Latino businesses from 2007 to 2023. Those that employ one or more workers grew nearly 20 times as fast as non-Latino employer businesses over the same period.

The cultural presence runs alongside the economic one. Salsa and reggaeton became mainstream American music. Roberto Clemente and Mariano Rivera reshaped professional baseball. Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina on the Supreme Court. Similarly, Lin-Manuel Miranda transformed Broadway, and Bad Bunny sells out arenas across the country. Ellen Ochoa flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1993, becoming the first Latina in space, while Carolina Herrera launched a fashion brand in New York in 1981 that became a fixture of American style. From the Supreme Court to the stadium to the kitchen, these contributions describe daily American life.

The Part That Hasn’t Changed

Despite all of our achievements, Latino and Black mothers, who together account for more than 40% of all U.S. births, continue to experience some of the nation’s highest maternal morbidity and mortality rates. Hospital systems are closing maternity units in underserved communities while those communities represent the majority of American births.

And this is nothing new. The resistance to demographic and cultural change has its own long history. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 sought to integrate public schools. White families across the South pulled their children out and placed them in all-white private schools. Federal troops enforced integration at Southern universities. Some of the worst anti-busing riots of the era occurred in Boston between 1974 and 1976. Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in 1963 to block two Black students from entering, following his inaugural promise, delivered that January, that said, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The pattern did not end there. Just think of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are being dismantled at companies and universities across the country. Deportation surges target the exact population driving the United States’ only positive labor force growth. As Clay Jenkinson wrote for Listening to America after attending a symposium on race and the American Revolution: “We’ve come a long way, but there is a long way to go to achieve racial equality and racial harmony.”

Tags: Minorities in America