Study: Diversity rises in suburbs
Updated 8/3/2006 11:08 PM ET
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

Suburban counties, once the bastion of white America, are becoming multiethnic tapestries, and white populations are inching up in some urban areas after big losses in the 1990s, according to new Census estimates out Friday.

"Suburbs and especially fast-growing outer suburbs are not just attracting whites anymore," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. "All minority groups are coming. They're a magnet for blacks as well as Hispanics and Asians."

The changes are dramatic in the South. About 74% of the growth in the U.S. black population happened there from 2000 to 2005. The region also generated about 71% of the national growth in whites, 42% of the Hispanic growth and 27% of the Asian growth.

"Things are becoming much more multicultural in areas that weren't before," says Frey, who analyzed county population estimates for July 1, 2005. "The South's growth is probably more balanced than other regions in racial and ethnic contributions."

Atlanta suburbs in counties such as Gwinnett, Clayton and Cobb had some of the largest gains among blacks, more evidence that the return black migration to the South that began in the 1990s continues.

Most suburban growth across the USA was buoyed significantly by Hispanics and Asians.