Seventeen states – home to 121 million people, or roughly 38 percent of the country’s population – had more deaths than births among non-Hispanic whites in 2014, up from just four states a decade earlier, according to research released Tuesday by the University of New Hampshire’s Casey School of Public Policy.

The trend, which cuts across blue and red states and can be found in both urban and rural areas, is expected to expand to more states in the near future, including Vermont, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Oregon, the report said.

White “natural decrease” – when births fail to keep up with deaths – is due largely to the aging of the baby boom generation and to declining white fertility rates, particularly since the Great Recession, the report found.

Nationally, the ratio of non-Hispanic white births to deaths is nearly at par, at 1.04 births for every death. The ratio is much higher for minority groups, particularly among Latinos, whose rate is 5.4 births for every death. The ratio for blacks is 1.94 percent for every death, and for Asians it is 1.75 births for every death.