When are minorities no longer in the minority?

When it comes to the United States, the answer appears to be 2042, according to the US Census Bureau.

That's the year when the bureau projects that people who call themselves "white" will no longer make up more than 50% of the US population.

(For the record, the Census Bureau defines "white" as people whose ancestors were "the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East.")

By 2050, the Census Bureau projects the US white population will be 46%.

The Hispanic population is projected to be 30 percent in 2050. Blacks are projected to make up 15% of the population at that point, and Asian Americans 9%.

Right now, people who identify as "white" make up 66% of the US population, according to the Census Bureau.

But whites are already no longer the majority group in several US states, including California and Texas.

The biggest population increase in the next 42 years is projected among Hispanics people "of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American or other Spanish culture," according to the Census Bureau.

The number of Hispanics in this country is expected to triple between now and 2050, because of higher immigration rates and higher birthrates among Hispanics.

And among kids, the demographic change is expected to come even faster.

The Census Bureau projects that non-white kids will outnumber white kids by the year 2023 just 15 years from now.

"No other country has experienced such rapid racial and ethnic change," said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, in an interview with the New York Times.

"What's happening now in terms of increasing diversity is probably unprecedented," said Campbell Gibson, a retired census demographer, speaking to the Times.

(A demographer is a person who keeps track of population statistics, including size, growth, density and distribution.)

The US population as a whole is expected to increase massively in the next half-century overall.

Right now, the population is approximately 305 million, according to the Associated Press.

By 2039, it's expected to reach 400 million.

And by 2050, the Census Bureau projects the US population to reach 439 million.

Some analysts are concerned about the environmental consequences of all those additional people, unless we make some changes in the way we live our daily lives.

"What this population rise means to me is anywhere from 40 (million) to 80 million more cars on the road, 35 (million) to 40 million more houses built," said Steven Camarota, a researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, in an interview with the Washington Post.

The US population is also expected to get significantly older, on average, by the middle of this century.

The reason?

Baby-boomers the tens of millions of people born in the 20 years after World War II will all be 65 by the end of the year 2030.

The Census Bureau projects that whites will continue to make up a majority of the senior-citizen population in 2050.

"(But) the future of America is epitomized by the young people today," said demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution, in an interview with the Associated Press. "They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future."