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Population Boom!

Spanish Translation

By Andrea Delbanco

The United States reached a big milestone last Tuesday. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's population clock, at 7:46 a.m., the number of people in the country hit 300 million. The clock uses an estimation formula that ticks off a birth every seven seconds, a death every 13 seconds and the addition of a new immigrant every 31 seconds. That equals one new American every 11 seconds.

Calculating the number of people in a large country is not an easy job. The Census Bureau counts the nation's population every 10 years. The last official census, taken in 2000, was conducted by mail, by telephone and through in-person interviews. That tally was 281,421,906 people. Since then, the Census Bureau has used the population clock to predict growth.

Many people believe the formula undercounts the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. They say last Tuesday's estimate is incorrect. "I don't think anyone believes it [was] the precise moment when the population hit 300 million," says Howard Hogan, of the Census Bureau. "We are confident that we're somewhat close."

My, How We've Grown
By any measure, the U.S. population has exploded in recent years. It is the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India, which each has a population of more than 1 billion. The U.S.'s first census, taken in 1790, registered 3.9 million people. It took until 1915 for the tally to reach 100 million. When the population hit 200 million in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson held a press conference to celebrate. News crews rushed to a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, to introduce the country to its historic new citizen, Bobby Woo. He was born at the exact minute the census clock hit 200 million.

Americans will likely number 400 million in 2043. Many things could affect this estimate, including new immigration policies. If current trends keep up, the U.S. will continue to become more diverse. White, non-Hispanic people will still be the majority, at about 52%. About 22% of the population will be Hispanic. People of many races consider themselves Hispanic. African Americans will make up 14% of the population and Asians 7%. The U.S. population is expected to grow by about 1% each year. That's about the same as the growth rate for the entire world. There are a whopping 6.5 billion people on the planet.

Some people did not cheer the new U.S. milestone. They worry about the population boom. "Americans will be using so much more of our share of the world's resources and kicking so much more pollution into the air," Charles Westoff, a population expert, told TFK.

A melting pot
Of today's Americans, 34.3 million were born in a foreign country. That's 12% of the total population. Experts predict that this number will keep climbing, making the country more diverse.

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