There are more deaths than there are births among white people for the first time in U.S. history, according to a report by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

More non-Hispanic white people are dying than there are white births in more than half the states. In contrast, white deaths exceeded births in only four states in 2004.

The U.S. Census Bureau projected white people would become a minority by 2045, but the new projections by the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, show it could happen sooner.

“It’s happening a lot faster than we thought,” said Rogelio Sáenz, a co-author of the report and a demographer at the University of Texas, San Antonio, The New York Times reported. Sáenz said he was so surprised by the results that he thought it was incorrect.

Part of the cause for the demographic decline of white people is largely due to both a drop in fertility and an increase in unnatural deaths. The fertility rates among white people sharply dropped after the Great Recession in 2007.

There was a sharp increase in white deaths starting in 2009, and more white people are dying from drug overdoses linked to the opioid epidemic, the study stated. (RELATED: 20 Percent Of Americans Have Known Someone Suffering From Opioid Addiction)

“The recession, the greatest shock to the American economic system in nearly two generations, influenced both fertility and life-cycle decisions for many families,” the study said.

Midwest states are some of the few states that have a natural increase of white births, but the overall rate is outweighed by mostly coastal states, which have experienced a very sharp decrease in white birth to death ratio in the past few decades.

In the 2016 presidential election, President Donald Trump won 20 out of the 24 states that have a natural increase of white people, meaning births keep pace with deaths. The only states with a natural increase that Trump didn’t win were Democratic heavy states: Oregon, Illinois, New York, and Virginia.

Trump also won 13 out of the 26 where white deaths outnumber white births.

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