[imgbelt img=minority-majority-map150.jpg]Ken Johnson of the Carsey Institute (Univ. of New Hampshire) reports that new estimates from the U.S. Census show “48.6% of the 4 million children born in the U.S.” between July 2008 and July 2009 “were minorities.”Johnson and colleague Daniel Lichter of Cornell found that U.S. racial diversity is greatest among the young and weakest among the elderly. Nearly half of the growth in U.S. population over the past decade has been Hispanic, and of that increase most is due to births, not immigration.The scholars write that “Though the minority child population is dispersing spatially,” they see “the emergence of two Americas: an increasing racially diverse region and a largely white region.”Regions in blue in the map above show counties that are already minority-majority. Yellow areas are majority non-Hispanic white. The “two Americas” don’t seem to reflect an urban/rural divide but strong regional differences. Find the whole Carsey report here.