Study: Chicago Metro Area Will Be Majority Minority By 2020
By Kate Shepherd in News on Dec 9, 2015 7:00PM
The Chicago metro area is on track to be majority minority by 2020. It's a major shift which will have an economic, political and cultural impact on the entire region over time.
A new Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning analysis of U.S. Census data shows that Latino and Asian populations are surging, while white and African-American residents are leaving the region, according to Crain's.
The population of the seven counties that make up Chicagoland has remained at about 8.5 million since the 2010 census, according to the analysis. Chicago's non-Hispanic white ratio has stabilized about one-third after a long-term decline.
The shift is happening in the suburbs, not the city:
The shift is almost entirely concentrated in the suburbs, with, for instance, roughly one in three residents of Will, DuPage and Lake Counties now from minority groups, up from one (or fewer) in four in 2010. In suburban Cook County, the minority share of the total population has gone from 33 percent in 2010 to 45 percent.
The demographics in the city of Chicago are different. High-income whites have been moving downtown and the white share of the population has risen from 31 percent in 2002 to 32 percent from 2005 to 2014.
African-Americans are moving out of the city with the share of the population dropping from an estimated 33.8 percent in 2005-09 to 31.5 percent from 2010 to 2014.
The Latino share has risen from 27.4 percent to 28.9 percent and the Asian share from 4.9 percent to 5.7 percent.