TIME recently published an article detailing some of the new numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau on the world's population by 2050, and it paints a radically different picture of the global demography. For instance, China, which has been a huge nation for population growth in the last five decades, is slowing down as it becomes more developed a fertility rates fall (this is common in all developed countries). Instead, India will replace it as the most populous country in the world by 2050. The findings are the result of a compilation of data and projections from 228 different nations by the Census Bureau's International Database (IDB).

     Other countries that have habitually experienced low birth rates are now on the rise, according to IDB project manager Loraine West. Spain and Italy, for instance, are on the "up-tick" according to West, which may be a population turnaround or simply a long-term fluctuation. Likewise several African nations are likely to show enormous surges in population numbers, with Nigeria and Ethiopia perhaps tripling their populations by 2050. As reported in TIME, the U.N. Population Division shows that nearly 1/5 of the world's population resides in high-fertility countries, or nations where women bare 1.5 daughters on average. This, in some of the worst resource-deprived areas in the world. It's likely that these booming populations will further exacerbate already crippling food and water shortages across the African continent, increasing the likelihood of large-scale refugee movements.

     The U.S. is likely to retain it's 3rd-place ranking in national population, but the demographic makeup within the country is likely to change dramatically. For instance, the Census Bureau announced last week that today over half of the children in the U.S. under 5 are minority, and while the numbers still show a majority of European descended whites in this country there will be a generational shift in that balance by 2050. Hispanics are, as has been widely documented, by far the fastest growing minority group in the U.S., which African Americans and then Asian Americans behind them.

      As with other times in our history when we've had to address a shift in one populations dominance or power, I feel our nation is likely to behave badly (and already are) as Hispanics continue to exert more cultural and social power in this country. However, the U.S. has always been a conglomeration of its various immigrant consituencies, even if a number of our conservative lawmakers seem to have forgotten that fact. It's likely that Spanish-language media will be more readily available, and even may make its way into the common American parlance. However, it's likely that the hispanic culture will simply be synthesized with the prevailing American one. We don't bat an eye at huge St. Patty's Day celebrations, even though at one point in the early 19th century they wanted to ban the holiday because of the high volume of Irish immgirants. African Americans, despite being forcibly emigrated to the U.S. have developed their own unique musical and cultural heritage that is now blended so well into the mainstream American culture that we no longer distinguish the two.

     There's no question that there will be big changes for the U.S. and the world by 2050; demographically, technologically, environmentally, and culturally. What remains to be seen is how people respond to those changes, and whether they can be made with grace and acceptance, or prejudice and resistance.