The United States census bureau has predicted that ethnic minority communities will make up more than half of America's national population by 2050.

The bureau also reported that Texas has become the fourth US state in which minority groups, taken together, account for a majority of the population. This was mainly driven by a rising number of Hispanics.

The Lone Star state joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii, which also have minorities of non-Hispanic whites.

Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona - each with minority populations of about 40% - are next in line, according to the study of state and county population estimates by race and Hispanic origin.

According to 2004 estimates, Texas had a minority population of 11.3 million, comprising 50.2% of its total population of 22.5 million people. Immigration accounted for half of the increase while the other half was a result of the excess of births over deaths among the Hispanic population. Hispanic women are having children at a rate of three for every woman, compared with 1.9 among non-Hispanic white women.

"In some sense, Texas is a preview of what the nation will become in the long run," Steven Murdock, the Texas state demographer, told the New York Times.

There are 293.66 million people currently living in the US, 95.81 million of whom - or 32.6% - are non-whites or Hispanic.

Public policy analysts said the country as a whole needed to bring minority education and professional achievement to the levels of non-Hispanic whites to prevent both from becoming poorer and less competitive.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said lawmakers need to begin immigration reform, while striving to raise education and salary levels for minorities.

美国人口调查局近日做出预测，到2050年底，少数族裔社区居民数量将占到该国人口总量的一半以上。目前美国人口总数为2.9亿人，其中32.6％，也就是9581万人为少数族裔。这里所说的少数族裔是指各个非白种人族裔以及西班牙裔白种人。

据英国《卫报》8月13日报道，得克萨斯州已成为美国第4个少数族裔居民在总人口中所占比例过半的州，造成这一局面的主要原因在于西班牙裔人口数量的快速增加。而其它3个这样的州分别是加利福尼亚、新墨西哥和夏威夷。此外，由于少数族裔人口比例已达40％左右，马里兰州、密西西比州、佐治亚州和亚利桑那州也将在不远的将来步入前面4个州的行列。

德州人口统计学家史蒂文·默多克说：“从某种意义上说，得克萨斯的今天就是全美国的明天。”华盛顿布鲁金斯学会的人口统计学家威廉·弗雷认为，立法者应尽力提高少数族裔的受教育和工资水平，同时还应在外来移民管理方面做出相应的改革。