Monday, March 02, 2015

POLITICS - More Diversity, What Does That Portend?

"As diversity increases, will U.S. be more or less politically divided?" PBS NewsHour 2/24/2015


Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The United States is rapidly transforming into a more diverse, more educated and older nation.  Gwen Ifill talks to Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute and Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress about a special collaborative report that analyzes the implications of these changes and what they mean for American politics.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  America is in the midst of rapid change, politically and demographically, as the nation grows dramatically more diverse, more educated, and older.

Two research organizations with normally divergent views combined to produce a new study that shows the far-reaching implications of that shift.

Karlyn Bowman analyzes public opinion for the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute and Ruy Teixeira is a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.

I find this so interesting.  I just want to walk through some of your findings one at a time.

The big one I noticed was that majority minority states, that is, the number of states which have a minority population — a majority minority population, are going to increase.  I think it starts at — right now, we have four states which meet that, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Hawaii.

And by — let me see, let me get this right — it’s be 20 — in 2060, it’s going to account for two-thirds of the country’s population.  That’s 22 states we’re talking about.

Karlyn Bowman, that’s a big change.

KARLYN BOWMAN, American Enterprise Institute:  That’s one of the big takeaways from this work that we have been doing that really in particular has done with Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution.  And I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways from the survey.

GWEN IFILL:  What does it mean?  What’s the significance of that?

KARLYN BOWMAN:  Well, it has both political consequences, economic consequences, and consequences for the private market.  It will affect every aspect of society going forward.

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