Hispanics accounted for 49 percent of the country's population growth from 2004 to 2005

D'Vera Cohn:

Nearly half of the nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census report released today.

Hispanics are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group. They accounted for 49 percent of the country's growth from 2004 to 2005, the report shows. And the increase in young children is largely a Hispanic story, driving 70 percent of the growth in children younger than 5. Forty-five percent of U.S. children younger than 5 are minorities.

The new numbers offer a preview of demographic shifts to come, with broad implications for the nation's schools, workforce and Social Security.

One in three Americans is now a member of a minority group, a share that is bound to rise, because the non-Hispanic white population is older and growing much more slowly. The country already is engaged in a national debate about how government should respond to growing immigration, legal and illegal.

In some parts of the country, the transformation is more visible than in others. Large swaths of the upper Midwest are still mainly non-Hispanic white. But minorities are a majority of children younger than 5 in the Washington area, according to previously released census numbers. That is also true in Miami, Houston, Los Angeles and other high-immigration regions.

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