On Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights or at your campus ministry, if you look out at the audience and it’s predominantly white your are looking at an end of era if these demographic trends hold.

A new study suggests that today’s white women seem less interested in having children than previous generations. According to the figures analyzed by the University of New Hampshire in a new demographic study, white women increasingly are delaying having children and having smaller families, while growing numbers of Hispanic women are having large families at conventional childbearing ages. As these trends continue, America will likely have a white minority by 2050.

“Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at New Hampshire. According to the report, whites currently make up two-thirds of the total U.S. population, but the number of white women of prime childbearing age—20-39 years old—is in decline, dropping 19 percent from 1990.

“It looks like ‘majority’ births would drop below 50 percent around 2012,” said Carl Haub, senior demographer for the Population Reference Bureau.

The researchers also discovered that fertility rates were higher among Hispanics, averaging three children per woman, compared to non-Hispanic white women, who average of just under two children each (1.87).

The research should serve as a “wake-up” for denominations, churches, and Christian ministries serving predominantly white communities. If those institutions do not begin to reach Latinos and Hispanics successfully they are headed for significant decline or extinction

(Editor’s Note Dr. Anthony Bradley is the newly-named Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College.)

Read more: http://online.worldmag.com/2010/03/17/whites-the-next-minority/