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United States

US Population Over Last Decade Grew At Slowest Rate Since 1930s (nytimes.com) 219

Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau reported on Monday, a remarkable slackening that was driven by a leveling off of immigration and a declining birthrate. The New York Times reports: The bureau also reported changes to the nation's political map: The long-running trend of the South and the West gaining population -- and congressional representation -- at the expense of the Northeast and the Midwest, continued, with Texas gaining two seats and Florida, one. California, long a leader in population growth, lost a seat for the first time in history. [...] The numbers are the product of the most controversial census process in decades. The Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the Census form, but the Supreme Court eventually blocked that plan. [...] The Bureau also faced a daunting task of conducting the Census during a pandemic. Then, last summer, the Trump administration pushed it to stop the count sooner than planned.

Booming economies in states like Texas, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina, have drawn Americans away from struggling small communities in high-cost, cold weather states. In New York, 48 of 62 counties are estimated to be losing population. In Illinois, 93 of 101 counties are believed to be shrinking. In 1970, the West and South comprised just under half the U.S. population -- today it's nearly 63 percent. The new decennial census counted 331,449,281 Americans as of April 1, 2020. The total was up by just 7.4 percent over the previous decade. Combined with the decline in inflows of immigrants, and shifting age demographics -- there are now more Americans 80 and older than 2 or younger -- the United States may be entering an era of substantially lower population growth, demographers said, putting it with the countries of Europe and East Asia that face serious long-term challenges with rapidly aging populations.
"This is a big deal," said Ronald Lee, a demographer who founded the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California at Berkeley. "If it stays lower like this, it means the end of American exceptionalism in this regard." It used to be clear where the country was headed demographically, Professor Lee said -- faster growth than many other rich nations. But that has changed. "Right now it is very murky," he said.
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US Population Over Last Decade Grew At Slowest Rate Since 1930s

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  • Children are a large carbon footprint. For once the US is a leader in a green initative.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Carbon aside there is just about exactly ONE thing that correlates with environmental degradation and that is population density. There are modifiers, the more affluent a population the degree of degradation vs density tappers some what but it does not reverse the trend.

      We should be glad population growth has tapered and recognize that it also happens naturally as affluence increases - in other words we don't need to start telling people how many children they can have etc. What we should do in the name of

  • and everyone feels it. Whether they're willing to acknowledge it or not. The only question left is how to control human populations over the longer term - humanely or not? Which generally comes down to birth control or genocide.

    • by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack&innerfire,net> on Monday April 26, 2021 @09:35PM (#61317838) Homepage Journal

      The best way to do that, is to give them jobs and raise their standard of living. Somehow as countries get more comfortable, they tend to have fewer children.

      • On the whole [youtu.be], that tends to be true.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @03:19AM (#61318496) Homepage Journal

        There's a balance. Education and empowerment brings the fertility rate down toward 2.1, the replacement level where population doesn't grow. Cost takes it below that, if people can't afford to have children they tend to only have one when they have been educated and empowered this way.

        Population fall is a problem in itself for developed nations - economies are generally set up with the assumption that there will be more younger people working than older people living on pensions and needing medical treatment. When that assumption breaks down it causes immediate problems, and long term ones as the younger folk still working today realize that by the time they retire there isn't going to be enough money to maintain the standard of living they want.

    • and everyone feels it

      A feeling is not exactly a strong foundation for a call for genocide.

      birth control

      Wiping out future generations does not seem like the best idea for an economy. Perhaps there could be a once a year purge like event for everyone over 60 or for people who make ignorant comments on Slashdot. Whoever takes them out can claim their assets. It would at least make for a good dystopian novel.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Well no, you have hard defined boundaries and you are responsible for the negative consequences of that including overpopulation, any emigrants from you country that do not exceed the average in possible host countries are rejected and returned, the return enforced if necessary through an in country, militarily deafened refugee return camp, which they are free to leave and return from that protected territory in their country to their country proper. It is not a game, keep your genitals in your pants or suf

      • I don't disagree with your assessment, but please, learn to write in a manner that doesn't hurt your reader's eyes. Punctuation and sentence structure are your friends.
    • Utter this simple fact, and everyone suddenly becomes innumerate and starts shrieking for you to kill yourself.
  • Because all the people who died of Covid definitely left their state.

    That being said, there are two local trends:

    1) Trying to escape the state due to insane taxes (lots of young people and retirees)

    2) Housing market (for this area which have typically been low) are going pretty much nuts.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      2019 - 2,845,793 deaths out of a population of 329,064,916
      2020 - 3,320,435 deaths out of a population of 331,002,647

      Mortality rate of the overall population increased from 0.86% in 2019 to 1.00% in 2020, or a 0.14% increase.

      The bubonic plague is estimated anywhere from 30% to 60%. On a scale of historical plagues, COVID-19 won't even be visible on a bar graph.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:03PM (#61317888)

        On a scale of historical plagues, COVID-19 won't even be visible on a bar graph.

        Half of us worked really fucking hard to keep it that way. We saw what Italy went through early on and said "nope", and now we're seeing what India is going through now and thinking "damn we just barely slid by that".

        And the other half of us are like "see? it wasn't a big deal at all ya'll a bunch of loudmouth losers, and by the way we gonna do our best to make sure ya'll ain't never heard from again." Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Or it could also be modern medicine. I mean, the plague happened and we didn't know why, which is why we had the infamous beaked masks and heavily clothed doctors - the beaked masks being filled with pungent herbs meant to neutralize the plague (we didn't know it was passed on by rats).

          The Spanish or Kansas flu at least happened when medicine was undergoing a revolution in breakthroughs. Much of the anti-vaxxer debate on measles requires modern medicine - without which the death rate of measles would be muc

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        All deaths are no equivalent. Dying of old age is different to dying of unaffordable medicine, both of which are different to dying of COIVD.

        Also the fact that "only" half a million Americans died of COVID is down to some people making the effort to keep the numbers as low as possible. Without action taken to limit the spread it would have been much worse.

    • Well, that count stopped at latest December 2020 which would have been 360k deaths if all were corrected. In reality, the count was basically done by Summer when we had only about 150k deaths. Regardless half a million people is only about 0.15% difference in the growth of from the 308 million to 332 million we saw.

      • by Entrope ( 68843 )

        On the other hand, even slim margins matter. For example, New York only lost a representative by coming up 89 people short [nbcnewyork.com]. Imbalances in death rates could shift the allocation.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Trying to escape the state due to insane taxes

      Most hardly give a shit about taxes. If all you want is a big fucking house out in the middle of nowhere, it's not that hard to come by in the US. The hard part is affording an interesting place, having an interesting job, and/or good weather.

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Hardly the case - looked at land values lately. unless you criteria for the middle nowhere is - it will be more than hours ride even Dollar General its $$ for anything more than handful of acres. Exceptions to that rule being there is something terrible about it like it being directly adjacent to an interstate.

  • Is the US population higher than it was before: Yes, ok, we have a positive first derivative.

    Is the number of people added the the US between 2010 and 2020 low than from 2000 and 2010? No, instead of adding 27 million, we added 24 million people. Ok so the second derivative is negative.

    How on Earth is that a crisis? Is the US going to be more successful with 560 million people in 2100 if every decade since 2010 we added another 28 million people compared to our current trend of having 524 million people in

    • by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:32PM (#61317966)
      You are comparing countries the size of Texas or in the case of Switzerland even smaller with the US. Have a look at a population map of the US. The Mountain West is pretty much unpopulated. US still has huge amounts of undeveloped land.
      • Are you living in 1850? We don't use millions of manual laborers to extract value from land any more.

        Direct employment stats for our resource extraction industries look something like this based on the last few years of data:
        Mining: 673k
        Forestry: 953k
        Farming: 2.6 million people work 2 million farms
        All fossil fuels: 2 million.

        Out of 330 million people in the country, about 170 million are in the age range for manual labor and fewer than 10 million people are directly involved with working the land to extract

      • Land we have, half is owned by the Federal Government who will not sell, but even so there is enough land.

        Water, on the other hand, is in short supply in most of the west. 8 inches of rain a year is the local expectation, and this is officially semi-arid. I think the low evaporation in the winter is all that saves us from officially being a desert.

    • I've never seen the correlation between wealth and population.

      The US economy is a house of cards built on continual growth - both economic and population. The only way Social Security remains solvent is either a high birth rate or a high legal immigration rate.

  • by Whatsisname ( 891214 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:05PM (#61318038) Homepage

    This should come at no surprise. Just about every aspect of our society is hostile towards having kids. They are expensive, economic policies make the financial choices difficult to make, health care costs is like playing financial Russian roulette with each baby.

    Our built environment leaves very few places for kids to live and grow. Excessive auto-oriented development has made most communities dangerous for children without close parental supervision. Suburban America might be an OK place to shelter children, but it isn't a place to raise them.

    Politicians in DC and State governments are constantly trying to ruin state schools, wanting to leave everyone unable to afford expensive private schools to fight for scraps.

    The USA is the only developed country with no mandated paid maternal leave, or paternal for that matter.

    And of course, the party that claims to be about family values is at the forefront of fucking all this shit up. It's a disgrace for the wealthiest country on earth.

    • Honestly, it's cliche but it sounds like you want to live in a socialist utopia. Every single bitch is not enough government-granted stuff.

      I have four children now in their 20s.
      We deliberately moved to the exurbs of Minneapolis (basically rural MN) to raise them because metro areas are indeed toxic shitholes to raise children.
      We definitely sacrificed some career choices to live here.

      Our kids had infinite place and space to play, live, and grow. Our schools were decent (elementary was great, middle school

    • by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @11:51AM (#61320030)
      Birth rates were much higher before anyone came up with the idea of parental leave, why would it's absence be a factor now?

      Why do poor people manage to raise more children than people who think they can't afford to raise any?

      Why is it the fault of the GOP that Democrat-run schools and systems are in the toilet?

      Come to think of it, how many of the problems you listed are directly caused by Democrat policies? Democrats run almost every major city and many suburbs, so if there's a "built environment" problem, who is responsible? Democrats don't run many rural areas, and those areas don't have the problems you're talking about. They're safer, cleaner, affordable and happier.

  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:25PM (#61318108)

    I had been telling everybody that because last year was like 1665, the plague year, that this year would be 1947, the year of so many babies. Despite all the commentary we have been hearing, apparently people took the lockdowns and distancing really seriously.

  • The US government are obviously committing genocide on the US population.

  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @03:01AM (#61318468)

    There is no better way to prevent resource wars, hate, global warming, animal cruelty, and pretty much all our current problems, than to reverse overpopulation.

    And it seems that we got very lucky, as wealth results in less drive to make children. So we can do good by making our lives better.

    The only thing is, that we need to get Africa, India etc such a good life too, for it to work. At least before the Internet completely breaks our society.
    Don't send food. Send education!

    • Re:*Thankfully!* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @03:14AM (#61318488) Homepage Journal

      That's not the story here. The story is that life in "Western" nations like the United States is changing and we must adapt to it.

      Firstly the cost of living is rising and wages are falling, relatively. Once upon a time a single person working full time could support a family, buy a decent house, car, and then retire with a comfortable pension. These days two people working full time will struggle to do that in many places.

      There are all sorts of reasons for this. Employees have not enjoyed the benefits of increased productivity, there are fewer decently paid manual labour jobs and apprenticeships for them. Jobs have moved to cities causing demand for housing in those areas to rise. Environmental problems mean no more cheap fossil fuels, while at the same time many items that used to last a lifetime have become disposable.

      Lower population growth is just a symptom - children are expensive to raise.

      We have an opportunity now, with the great Work From Home experiment, to make a real positive change to address some of these problems. Heavy investment in renewable energy could also make energy cheaper for everyone, as well as powering the economy out of the pandemic induced slump.

      • Kids from large families tend, on average, to grow up and have larger families than kids from small families. Due to nature and nurture.

        Over time (100s of years) large families will again dominate. It is called natural selection.

        Our current values are skewed. We prefer living well to having lots of grandchildren. And we can have sex without having babies. But that will change, as natural selection takes over.

        It is, after all, natural selection that gave you all your current goals and moral values. (U

        • You're assuming that humans act like most other animals, but we don't. What actual evidence -- from everywhere in the world -- shows is that as humans get wealthier and better-educated, and child mortality decreases, they have fewer children, not more. This effect is independent of culture. Parents who have reason to believe that their children will survive to adulthood have few children and invest more into them. Parents who aren't sure their kids will survive, and who need the additional labor to help out

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The opposite happens. In Bangladesh the fertility rate was around 9 in the 1960s. Now it's about 2.4. Clearly the younger generations are reaping the benefits of education and reducing family size. There has been a big campaign to empower women to control their fertility and see the benefits of having fewer children.

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Once upon a time a single person working full time could support a family, buy a decent house, car, and then retire with a comfortable pension.

        Right the labor force is to large, so labor is devalued. We need to rethink the policies that enable and encourage single parent homes and the lower of w2 wages in two income house holds should be taxed at the highest rate to discourage two income house holds / force employers to pay wages high enough to make work pay.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's more to do with the post-war boom and cheap petrochemicals with little regard for the environment or climate change. Plus as the developing world started manufacturing that labour got less valuable.

      • Once upon a time a single person working full time could support a family, buy a decent house, car, and then retire with a comfortable pension. These days two people working full time will struggle to do that in many places.

        Of course, once upon a time, a car was what your family had. Nowadays, it tends towards one car per driver for a moderately successful family. Plus a computer per person, instead of a computer per household. Plus....

        Yeah, if you want to live with a 1970's standard of living, you can

      • There are all sorts of reasons for this. Employees have not enjoyed the benefits of increased productivity, there are fewer decently paid manual labour jobs and apprenticeships for them. Jobs have moved to cities causing demand for housing in those areas to rise.

        In the US there are significant labor shortages in the trades while salaries are rising. Fewer people want to do the work.

        Environmental problems mean no more cheap fossil fuels, while at the same time many items that used to last a lifetime have become disposable.

        Energy is still as cheap as dirt here in the US due to production efficiencies. Energy costs are not driving living costs any more than they have been.

        We have an opportunity now, with the great Work From Home experiment, to make a real positive change to address some of these problems.

        If everyone lived in a 300 sqft cube and nobody owned a vechicle the world would still be full of double income no kids struggling to pay the bills. Less is not more.

    • As usual for your ill thought out posts, this has nothing to do with population. It has to do with immigration.

  • by Tempest_2084 ( 605915 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @06:30AM (#61318816)
    Besides the obvious factors like changing societal values and whatnot, there's a big one that people are missing: Optimism, or lack thereof. For the last 10+ years we've constantly been being told that the world is crap, life is crap, and you'll never get anywhere no matter how hard you try because the deck is stacked against you. Hell, Millennial/Gen Z humor is full of jokes wishing for death and how life is just one big turd sandwich. Do you really think people are going to want to have kids in an environment like that? When people have no optimism they're not thinking about the future and when you're just concerned about surviving in the here and now you're generally not thinking about having kids.

    Another factor is the lack of maturity among, well just about everyone. People aren't learning HOW to be adults, they're being coddled and shielded from responsibilities well into what would normally be the beginning of your adult years (mid/late 20's / early 30's). It started with my generation (Gen X) and seems to getting worse with each successive generation. I'm not talking about 'Working in the coal mine at age 7' kind of maturity, I mean just basic life skills like being able to hold a part time job, manage your time, or make a simple budget kind of maturity. When you don't know how to be an adult or you're still struggling with 'Adulting' (I hate that term), you're really not thinking about having kids. Kids would just be another issue you don't know how to deal with.

    Rather than trying to import people to fix a slowing population (which is a temporary and short sighted solution), maybe we should try and fix the reasons behind the problem?
    • by kackle ( 910159 )
      +1 Interesting points and seemingly true.

      Further, the fallout crime from illegal immigration makes life less pleasant, too, if one's area is adversely affected by it.

      And more "bad news" makes parents want to lock down and "protect" their kids even more.
  • Tonnes of CO2e:
    119 per parent per year is the US average for having a kid.
    001.6 for a single roundtrip transatlantic flight.
    002.1 per person per year, is the interim average maximum TOTAL budget to prevent a catastrophic 2C increase.
    058.6 per parent per year is the global average for having a kid.
    (Wynes 2017 [iop.org])
    Chart with global averages. [guim.co.uk]

    We have to vote for parties that will jail people who exceed 2.1 tonnes per year. We need to have at most 0.01 kids per person for about a century to have a chance
  • ...I wanted ALL my life to Move to America.

    Why? Because I largely grew up on American ideals and the love of freedom. I fully believed in the Constitution and thought it was the finest thing on earth, one of my favourites was:

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    Over the years, my dreams darkened, I became older and it was h

  • Maybe. Or maybe the vast influx of illegal aliens was greatly undercounted.

Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve. - Anonymous

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