The US's future is older, browner, and feminine

Color Shift

Even as America goes gray (and promptly dyes its hair), its skin will become more polychrome. Buoyed by higher birth rates among minorities and increasing immigration from Latin America and Asia, parts of the United States will become as diverse as a New York subway car. Minorities will make up one-third of the U.S. population in 2016; in the decades to come, Hispanics, now one of every seven Americans, will be one in four. As Hispanic influence grows, it will be transformed from the undifferentiated "niche market" many Americans consider it to be today into a mass market in its own right, segmented by nationality, cultural experience, and other characteristics.

The cultural influx won't only be Hispanic, though. High schools will soon routinely offer Hindi and Mandarin as Asians become a still more influential slice of the populace. MTV is already launching new channels, MTV Desi, MTV Chi, and MTV K aimed at South Asian, Chinese, and Korean immigrant teens. We can expect a proliferation of culture not only pitched to Asians, but by them.

The rise of these new blocs will change American diets, tastes, and cultural references--but it will also redefine the notion of race itself, perhaps permanently. The distinction between black and white will become an anachronism: Get ready for the politics of brown.

But this burst of diversity and immigration will affect regions of the country differently. Almost one-half (46%) of U.S. population growth in the next decade will come from three states: California, Texas, and Florida, which by 2016 will have overtaken New York as the third-largest in the country. The giant sucking sound you'll hear will be the national center of gravity shifting south and west. By 2016, where you compete may matter much more than how.

It won't be just the age and color of the workforce that change in the years ahead--its gender will change, too. Though it has been widely underreported, women make up approximately 58% of the undergraduate college population, and that figure is rising.

Within 10 years, at least 3 million more women than men could be attending college, and because educational and economic achievement are so strongly correlated, those gains will inevitably translate into cultural influence, purchasing power, and corporate leadership. That trend will only accelerate through the 2010s.

Women's economic achievement is already seeding the clouds for a deluge of distaff marketing and product development. According to the National Association of Realtors, the percentage of single female home buyers in the past 20 years has nearly doubled, placing them second only to married couples. And the number of women buying high-end consumer electronics like plasma televisions is growing faster than the number of men (a reality yet to sink in at the big-box stores).

Finally, while the workplace undergoes tremendous change, so will the American family. Thanks to boomer retirees who've outlived their income--or failed to save any of it--many families are going to get bigger.

Consider Florida: While most of us think of it as a geriatric haven, in recent decades the number of seniors exiting the state has steadily increased, in many cases because they can no longer afford to stay. (To deal with this, MetLife started offering longevity insurance in 2004, a fixed deferred-income annuity to help insure seniors against "the biggest risk they will face in retirement: longevity risk." )

Where will boomers go when they run out of money? In many cases, the answer will be, home to live with their kids. In fact, according to some projections, a woman born after 1980 is likely to take care of her mother longer than she cares for her own children. (Perhaps MetLife will get around to "mother-in-law" insurance.) As those boomers move back in, they'll redefine the family from a two-generation "nuclear" family to a three- or even four-generation affair, a return to the beginning of the 20th century.

These new multigenerational families will be a fertile new market for everything from new senior-plus-family transportation (call it "the Clan-agon") to travel, entertainment, cooking, and shopping. Health-care and financial-services companies will find themselves speaking not only to their senior customers but to their family members, who form an extended-care network.

Oh, and it's not just your parents who may be living with you. Your kids may be there, too. Millennials fully expect to live forever, which gives them plenty of time to drag out each stage of life, starting with a nice prolonged "twixter" adolescence. For some, this will last well into their thirties.

You won't have to worry about a babysitter, though: Grandma plays a mean game of Grand Theft Auto.

Futurist Andrew Zolli is the founder of Z + Partners, a strategy consulting firm, and curator of the annual PopTech conference. He was a member of the Fast 50 class of 2005.