Utah's minority ratio lags

The nation's minority population has surpassed 100 million, according to census estimates released today, which show roughly one in three Americans is a minority.

The ratio is about the same as last year, when the minority population was estimated at 98.3 million.

"To put this into perspective, there are more minorities in this country today than there were people in the United States in 1910," said Louis Kincannon, director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

The nation's population was 92.2 million in 1910. Today it's topped 300 million.

Four states — Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas — are minority-majority as is the District of Columbia, according to the Census Bureau population estimates for July 1, 2006, based on race, Hispanic origin, sex and age.

Utah remains among the 21 states with fewer than 20 percent minorities. Roughly 17 percent of the state's 2.55 million residents are minorities.

Still, the state is seeing growth in its minority population, driven largely by Hispanics. More than one in four new Utahns were Hispanic from 2000 to 2006, said Pamela Perlich, senior research economist for the University of Utah.

Nationally, Hispanics remained the largest minority group, with 44.3 million — nearly 15 percent of the total population. Hispanics also accounted for nearly half of the nation's one-year total population growth of 2.9 million.

The nation's black population grew to 40.2 million in 2006. The Asian population was 14.9 million, American Indians were at 4.5 million and there were 1 million Pacific Islanders.

In Utah, Hispanics are also the largest minority group — with an estimated July 1, 2006, population of 286,113. The next largest population group was Asian, estimated at 48,788, followed by American Indian at 28,854, black at 20,627 and Pacific Islanders at 18,239. An additional estimated 33,087 people reported more than one race.

The influx of minorities is somewhat new to the state where in 1950 minorities made up only 1.7 percent of the population, said Robert Spendlove, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. In 1990, 8.8 percent of Utahns were minorities.

"There's definitely a possibility that we are even more than this data would show," Spendlove said. "A lot of this growth is international migration, and a lot of that growth is undocumented population. That is the most difficult population to count."