Manhattan, NY – White Population Rises in Manhattan

Manhattan, NY – For the first time since the 1970s, a majority of Manhattan’s population is non-Hispanic white, according to an analysis of census estimates.

The white share of the population, which had dipped to about 40 percent as recently as the 1990s, climbed to nearly 51 percent last year. The rest of the borough’s residents were 24 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black and 11 percent Asian.

In 2000, the proportions were 46 percent non-Hispanic white, 27 percent Hispanic, 16 percent black and 10 percent Asian.

The changes reflect several trends, including the dispersal of black and Hispanic Manhattanites, in part because of gentrification in Harlem, East Harlem and Washington Heights, and the construction or conversion of tens of thousands of apartments downtown, in the East Village, Hell’s Kitchen and other neighborhoods for higher-income tenants and owners.

Since 2000, the number of Dominicans in Upper Manhattan grew by about 20 percent to about 165,000. But by last year, the black population of greater Harlem had declined to about 4 in 10 residents and central Harlem to about 6 in 10.

In Lower Manhattan, south of Canal Street and west of Chinatown, the white population surged by more than 25 percent between 2000 and 2005, much of it the result of an influx of whites working on Wall Street and couples who stayed in the neighborhood to raise families.

“Overall, the trend of people, particularly younger people, is staying in cities to build their lives and careers,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York. “People would die to live in Manhattan now.”

But Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, expressed concern that the “conflation of luxury development and good strong public housing stock” means that “that the borough is becoming a place for very, very wealthy people and enclaves for poor people and that middle-income people are finding it impossible to stay here.”

“The entrance fee to live here is a million-dollar condo,” Mr. Stringer said. “It’s magnificent and a great place to live, but its becoming more challenging for two teachers, or a nurse.”

The latest census estimates from 2009 reflect the growing diversity of a city in which no single group dominates. Results from the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey, due later this year, are likely to provide a better gauge of the impact of the recession and the housing slump on migration.

While Manhattan may have become less attractive to some college graduates and other job-seekers, the number of residents leaving the borough may have slowed because of the lack of opportunity elsewhere and the difficulty in selling apartments.

Last year, Manhattan reversed a decade-long streak of population gains and lost residents, even as the city lost fewer people to other places than at any time since at least 1990.

According to estimates as of July 1, 2009, the borough, which had grown by nearly 90,000 since 2000, dropped by about 2,500 — a small decrease, but one that contrasted with annual gains that peaked at 15,000 in the middle of the decade.