History: United States Of America, 1970-1979

The 2010 U.S. Census reported 308,745,538 residents; the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Clock projects the country's population now to be 310,908,000, including an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants. The third most populous nation in the world, after China and India, the United States is the only industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected. With a birth rate of 13.82 per 1,000, 30% below the world average, its population growth rate is 0.98%, significantly higher than those of Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea. In fiscal year 2009, 1.1 million immigrants were granted legal residence. Mexico has been the leading source of new residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.
The United States has a very diverse population—thirty-one ancestry groups have more than one million members. White Americans are the largest racial group; German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constitute three of the country's four largest ancestry groups. African Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group. Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans. In 2008, the U.S. population included an estimated 4.9 million people with some American Indian or Alaskan natives ancestry (3.1 million exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.1 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.6 million exclusively).
The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans (the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major demographic trend. The 46.9 million Americans of Hispanic descent are identified as sharing a distinct "ethnicity" by the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent. Between 2000 and 2008, the country's Hispanic population increased 32% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 4.3%. Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54% of that figure born in Latin America. Fertility is also a factor; the average Hispanic woman gives birth to 3.0 children in her lifetime, compared to 2.2 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1). Minorities (as defined by the Census Bureau, all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites) constitute 34% of the population; they are projected to be the majority by 2042.
About 82% of Americans live in urban areas (as defined by the Census Bureau, such areas include the suburbs); about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2008, 273 incorporated places had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four global cities had over 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston). There are fifty-two metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million. Of the fifty fastest-growing metro areas, forty-seven are in the West or South. The metro areas of Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix all grew by more than a million people between 2000 and 2008.