Don’t It Make My Blue Eyes Brown
Americans are seeing a dramatic color change
By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff
October 17th, 2006
If the Census Bureau has it right, the 300 millionth American entered the United States kicking and screaming this morning. The odds are that this milestone American is a boy, born to a white family in a California suburb. He will have a 1-in-4 shot of graduating from college, will probably marry, father two children, struggle with his weight, and live to see his 85th birthday.
What he will probably not have — that his grandfather likely did — is a pair of blue eyes.
Once a hallmark of the boy and girl next door, blue eyes have become increasingly rare among American children. Immigration patterns, intermarriage, and genetics all play a part in their steady decline. While the drop-off has been a century in the making, the plunge in the past few decades has taken place at a remarkable rate.
About half of Americans born at the turn of the 20th century had blue eyes, according to a 2002 Loyola University study in Chicago. By mid-century that number had dropped to a third. Today only about one 1 of every 6 Americans has blue eyes, said Mark Grant, the epidemiologist who conducted the study. (…. Full Article Here)
