Joe Biden's imaginary America

Last year, as even a New York Times analysis indicates, most urban counties lost population as people moved to suburbs and smaller towns. This accelerating movement of city residents to suburbs has included two large, historically liberal constituencies: Millennials and minorities. Members of the younger set, in­evitably getting older, were already ditching the big city before the pandemic, as the Brookings Institution found in 2019. This is being driven, suggests a Zillow survey in May, by “space seekers” — Millennials who want to get married and have children and naturally follow the home preferences of their parents. Meanwhile, the suburbs have become increasingly integrated. Demographia’s City Sector Model analysis indicates that 83 percent of Hispanics and 76 percent of African Americans, the two most economically disadvantaged groupings, already live in the suburbs. The stereotypes of the 1950s and 1960s no longer hold. In the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, 44 percent of residents live in racially and ethnically diverse suburbs, ranging from 20 percent to 60 percent non-white. More than a third of the 13.3 million new suburbanites between 2000 and 2010 were Hispanic, with white non-Hispanics accounting for a mere fifth of suburban growth in that same period. African Americans have also been steadily moving from inner cities, in some cases because of gentri­fication and because many middle-income areas have declined owing to economic collapse or crime. These trends will continue at the national level if for no other reason than that there is no population growth among white non-Hispanics, even in suburbs. From 2010 to 2019, according to the American Community Survey, Asian and Hispanic populations grew rapidly, and blacks experienced some growth, while the white non-Hispanic population declined by more than 100,000. White Millennials may ultimately replace their parents, but virtually all net suburban growth will be concentrated among minorities.