Investing in the latest census data

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the minority population in the United States reached an estimated 104.6 million, or 34 percent of the nation's total population, on July 1 2008. That's up from 31 percent when the census was last taken in 2000. According to the latest data, nearly one in every six residents (46.9 million people) are Hispanic. Furthermore, the report notes that 44 percent of children under the age of 18 and 47 percent of children younger than five are now from minority families.

This is good news according to Ken Gronbach, author of The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Growing Demographic Trend. Gronbach believes that "Latinos have saved our country . . . They represent 14 percent of the population but 25 percent of the live births. The United States is the only western industrialized nation with a fertility rate above the 2.2 percent replacement rate." The credit doesn't rest solely on the shoulders of the Hispanic community, as Asians (the second-fastest growing group) increased 2.7 percent on a year-over-year basis to 15.5 million and the African-American population increased 1.3 percent to 41.1 million.