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United States

US Deaths Expected To Outpace Births Within the Decade (thehill.com) 77

Posted by BeauHD from the earlier-than-expected dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The number of deaths in the U.S. is expected to exceed the number of births by 2033, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) annual 30-year projection of the U.S. population released on Monday. That estimation comes seven years earlier than what the CBO estimated in its 30-year population outlook released last year. At that time, in January 2024, the CBO projected deaths to outpace births by 2040. The CBO's 2025 report projected lower population growth over the next three decades than it did in its 2024 demographic outlook.

The CBO's population estimate for 2025 is 350 million, a slight increase from the 346 million it predicted for 2025 last year. But its projection for 2054 -- 372 million people -- has decreased since last year, when the CBO projected the population would be 383 million in 2054. The rate of growth projected over the next three decades -- 0.2 percent -- is significantly slower than the rate seen in the prior five decades, from 1975 to 2024, when the population grew at 0.9 percent. The growth rate over the next three decades is also expected to slow. From 2025 to 2035, the population is expected to grow an average of 0.4 percent a year. From 2036 to 2055, however, the growth rate is projected to be 0.1 percent. The CBO attributes this projected slow rate of growth to a variety of factors, including lower fertility, an aging population and lower immigration.

US Deaths Expected To Outpace Births Within the Decade More | Reply

US Deaths Expected To Outpace Births Within the Decade

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  • In the long term, this is good for the Earth, reducing the resources needed.

    In the slightly shorter term, there will be some disruption to the economy as the population of working age becomes a lower fraction of the total population.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

      To your first point, not just good for the Earth, good for the individual. The Earth is finite, and with fewer of us each has a chance at a larger share of it.

      To your second point... you are vastly underestimating what's coming.

      • Equalizing births & deaths isn't so bad.

        Imagine having over double the number of deaths vs births each year [visualcapitalist.com]. Their goose is cooked.

      • Or the next person to be born could have been the one to solve climate change. If the assumption is that more people is always bad, then no wonder it's declining.

        • Or the next person to be born could have been the one to solve climate change. If the assumption is that more people is always bad, then no wonder it's declining.

          Ah, yes - by aborting this foetus, you would have aborted Beethoven (the Great Beethoven fallacy [rationalwiki.org]).

          Equally, the next person to be born could be the one to stop climate change research and sack all atmospheric physicists and environmentalists.

          • > Equally, the next person to be born could be the one to stop climate change research

            Excellent point, not that it would matter in that example. ALso the next person to be born could be the next Hitler, or the idiot who releases a deadly genetically enginered virus by not following the correct procedures when they got distracted.

            Or even intentionally releasing it.

        • Most people I've talked to assume more people is always good, certainly the people in power think so and loudly say it. Why they think 8 billion isn't enough already I don't know.

          • The billionaires aren't the problem. The people who make a six figure income and suddenly think they're rich are. A few billionaires didn't drive up hone prices to where it's normal to live with your parents until your mid 30s. A few billionaires didn't make a new car cost more than the average family income, or a college degree cost more than a house. This was all of the six figure earners trying to extract the most money from the laborers "beneath" them.

        • > Or the next person to be born could have been the one to solve climate change

          Thats a BS statement:

          1. You cant stop climate change. Or solve it. You need to adapt.
          2. That sort of thing rarely happens as humans tend to think like each other. Very few things can be attributed to an individual, such as Alan Turning with the fundementals on how computers can work, Einstein with the fundementals of space time. As long as you have the fundementals most humans can continue the work. The wheel and axle bei

          • Everything can be solved. The right renewable energy or carbon capture breakthrough will effectively solve climate change.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Sique ( 173459 )
              Yes and no. The Carbondioxide from today's emissions will still be in the atmosphere and cause it to move to a new thermal equilibrium. And while plants do sequester atmospheric Carbondioxide, it's a very slow process. All harvests of a single year will take about 500 million metric tons of Carbondioxide out of the atmosphere, but we have put in about 200 billion metric tons in the last 125 years. If we don't eat any of our harvests for the next 400 years, and bury all of it, so it is sealed from re-enterin
              • It buys time and reduces the ultimate amplitude of the shift.

                1.5C is now in the rear view mirror. That's extremely concerning because 1.5C is established as the lower limit where a whole lot of extremely bad things (AMOC collapse, Thwaites collapse, clathrate blowouts) start entering the realm of possibility, with the odds an increasing function of further increase. At this point it is getting clearer and clearer that the Perpetual Growth Delusion is suicidal insanity that must be halted. Instead every y
              • You left out the key piece that wind and solar power remove energy from the equation that was otherwise stuck in the atmosphere as heat. Even using evaporation to elevate water, move it to a higher elevation, and then generate hydro power would help remove energy from the atmosphere. This is a better solution for everyone because there is no financial benefit to reducing CO2 emissions. There's a popular theory that oil is make by a geologic process and will never run out. If this turns out to be true, we ne

              • It depends on how pessimistic you want to be, but warming will stop when we hit carbon zero.

    • In the long term, all is good.

      "But in the long term, we're all dead".

      • In the long term, all is good.

        "But in the long term, we're all dead".

        Can't avoid death and taxes -- though some try ...

      • No, when society collapses and most humans are gone, the humans left will toss away the ideas of career before childbirth and having one mate etc and they'll resume breeding like rabbits.

        70,000 years ago there were only a few thousand humans on the entire planet, we survived that, even if they all were close relations making babies.

        • "Breeding like rabbits" is the social security of yesteryear, when a large family meant that maybe someone of your grandkids will bring you bread and a glass of water on your deathbed. In other words, "breeding like rabbits" means no civilization.

          "Breeding like rabbits" in an environment without a modern civilization, in which the "easy" resources that supported the industrial revolutions of the past 300 years are unavailable because our forefathers ate them up, will only mean Malthusian starvation, and not

          • The people at assisted living and nursing homes only make $14 an hour. Someone has to produce this cheap labor, even if you don't make your own grandkids to bring you bread and water in your final years. There are interesting economics around this where the government effectively bankrupts you before using Medicare to pay for assisted living, and none of your wealth passes on to the people providing your care, just to the upper middle class owners of the facility.

            • It is a sure thing that in the US wherever you see a pool of free money, you also see a financial lobby and its government extension that tries to wet its beak from the pool on behalf of the lobby.

              But what does the failure of your government have to do with our Cro-Magnon forefathers breeding babies?

    • Nah, go watch some of the videos on the poor of India producing kids. 1/4th of their population is under 14, thatâ(TM)s about the size of the entire population of US. That is why they are talking about mass imports of Indians. India has a culture that lets the poor live, at a ramshackle level, while US will label them homeless and convict them if they lived in the same huts. When Indians take over the US this will be reversed, as will population decline, but the whole thing is pretty pointless.

      • India's fertility rate has been dropping like a rock and is now 2.01 births per woman [google.com]. If they stayed at that level, which they won't, their population would level off in a couple generations and stay there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "That is why they are talking about mass imports of Indians."

        Who is "they"? No one in the US is talking about that, except to incite fear. And they are suggesting "mass imports of Indians" because ¼ of the Indian population is under 14? Do you hear yourself?

        "India has a culture that lets the poor live..."
        LOL how terrible! We should fix that, right?

        "When Indians take over the US this will be reversed, as will population decline, but the whole thing is pretty pointless."
        Pointless because it doesn't e

        • Yes, this came up in the H1B MAGA wars over Musk comments. My sources are highly placed. India has had good population growth and lots of kids, so in coming decades shrinking populations necessitate imports of Indian workers, mostly H1Bs. And do I hear myself? Yes, do you hear me? The Indian culture, with all its issues, allows people simple lives living in what would be considered a shed in America, married with kids. People living in the same communities would actually be arrested in police sweeps in the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      The problem is all our economic models are built on unlimited growth to fund pensions.

      If "AI" disrupts that, then birth rates are going to go down, substantially.

      So while it is good for there to be globally less people, those less people need to be in places like China and India that keep having children until they have a male heir, but then lock themselves in loveless marriages for economic reasons.

      What needs to happen is that:
      1. Everyone is entitled to a home. Not a 350sq foot closet. A 1200sq foot home.
      2

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I agree, this is good. Though it comes too late.

      In the slightly shorter term, there will be some disruption to the economy as the population of working age becomes a lower fraction of the total population.

      Well, some already far too rich assholes will probably have to be dealt with and greed will need to be curbed. Some countries will manage and to well. Others, not so much. This is not a problem of productivity, but one of wealth distribution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's already becoming a major problem. It's also one of the reasons why some people want to take away your ability to control your fertility.

    • The population of USA is still expected to grow (345 to 421 millions) until 2100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] If you want to see numbers going down, check China halving its population in the same period. The world still increases 8 to 10 billion with a large contribution from Africa.

    • If we concentrated on improving efficiency everywhere instead of wasting resources in the name of personal vanity and "keeping up with the Jones's" , we should be fine.

    • Nah. Holding to a birthrate of 2.1 ad infinitum would be the best possible outcome, especially considering how much effort and technology could be committed in the future towards making more-efficient use of land and resources. Earth could sustain much more biomass than what it sustains now, and we could render larger swathes of Earth habitable.

      The last thing you want are your young to dwindle and fade away. Young people could (and should) be the drivers of innovation and expansion. Having less of them

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Close but I think it would be better to have below 2 until the total population was significantly smaller, then go for around 2.0 to keep it stable. With a smaller population it would not matter if there was modest gains or losses. You are dead right they you don't want it going too low or population age spread would get skewed. The real question is what is a healthy population range, too low and you risk not being able to handle extinction events and too high you risk creating extinction events, like we
    • it seems idiots like bill gates have gotten to your rotten mind

  • Practical economic experiment time! (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @10:37PM (#65089651)

    Watch what happens when you have all your support systems dependent on each new generation being larger than the previous one, and you demonize immigrants, evict the current ones and then close the doors to new ones.

    Oh, and at the same time you gut your youthful labor force, you raise prices on all goods by slapping tariffs on all that foreign manufacturing that's been keeping costs down and making your billionaires richer.

    Don't worry, the billionaires will be just fine.

    • Don't worry, the robots and the AI will take care of us all. I don't know how, but with Elona, Zuck and Sam giving the instructions, I'm sure it will be a beautiful new world.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      They solve this problem by banning abortion and birth control. You do understand that one of the pillars of white nationalism is winning the offspring battle, right? That is explicitly stated, that whites need to out reproduce the browns. Gotta brush up on the racism, particularly on the christian racism which was founded on out birthing the competition.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Every year the movie Idiocracy feels less like a comedy and more like a documentary.

    • Watch what happens when you have all your support systems dependent on each new generation being larger than the previous one, and you demonize immigrants, evict the current ones and then close the doors to new ones. Oh, and at the same time you gut your youthful labor force, you raise prices on all goods by slapping tariffs on all that foreign manufacturing that's been keeping costs down and making your billionaires richer. Don't worry, the billionaires will be just fine.

      Adding to the things the billionaire class and broligarchs don't care about, but effect the rest of us...

      (a) Undocumented workers often pay taxes that help fund programs like Social Security — even if they (usually*) can't collect from them in the future and (b) lower wages means lower taxes paid -- income and into the social security fund.

      * Under what circumstances may a non-citizen be eligible for SSI? [ssa.gov]

      Side note: Eliminating taxes on tips would reduce money individual workers pay into SSI and c

      • Heh, broligarch is nice, I'm stealing it shamelessly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        "Eliminating taxes on tips" Meanwhile the rest of world points out paying people a decent minimum wage would do away with the need for tipping (and increase tax collection). When you first learn that tipping is the norm in the USA because without it many people would not take home enough money to survive you kind of wonder if the USA is actually a 3rd world country.

  • When your economy has become so expensive that most folks are barely getting by,
    then it should come as no surprise that adding kiddos into this equation is a recipie for
    misery.

    Folks like Musk are shocked that people aren't having more kids but they're completely
    out of touch with the reality that the average persion simply doesn't have millions or
    billions of dollars at their disposal.

    Won't even go into the dismal American Education system, the insane costs of a college
    degree and even the dismal prospects of

  • Having kids isn't the cool thing to do anymore. The cost of child care is beyond obscene and society expects both parents to have jobs. Further once you have kids, you're basically dead for the next 18 years with all of your friends who don't have kids.

    This is why the Biden administration just let a bunch of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers across the border. Without a growing population, the government can't continue growing and will start retracting. You can forget social security, it's a giant ponzi

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "This is why the Biden administration just let a bunch of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers across the border."

      Oh, they just did? When was that? Why did the Trump administration let a bunch of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers across the border? That's what we all want to know. Please tell us, since you clearly have inside information.

      "You can forget social security, it's a giant ponzi scheme and without more people willing to pay into the system, social security is cooked."
      SS is not a "giant po

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      The SS system would be just fine if they would reform the payments into it to be based on ALL income and not just the first $!80K or so from an employer. Of course the right wingniks will whine, but they whine about everything; it gets tiring but they never seem to lack things to whine about.

      SS is what keeps Grandma and Grandpa Kettle from moving in with you. Medicare pays their health expenses, at least up to a point. If you cannot support your old agers, what kind of society do you have? Ans: a Christian

  • People have kids when they're optimistic about the future.

    People not having kids is a vote of no confidence in society and its structures and institutions.

    Want people to have kids? Refrain from giving them ample reason to doubt the sanity and good judgment of the self-proclaimed adults in the room.

    Like, you know...claiming that sending kids to school is anti-intellectual, or openly cheerleading for the people literally welding people into their houses. The people on the direct receiving end of being welded

    • Well, you being a "rightwing nutjob" have no reasons to complain. You won, you'll fix it. Right?

      • They have an answer, and it's just as horrible as you'd expect... keep women like property, rape them at will, and ban abortion.

        They don't state it like that, but if you look at their policies and past behavior, that's the obvious outcome.

        • If we're looking at past policies and behavior, one party was literally fighting a war for the right to buy and sell people. They "moderated" at the point of a gun to merely demanding the right to keep those people as legally codified second-class citizens.

          Three guesses which party that was. And the first two don't count.

          Or we could refrain from ascribing the worst excesses of their ancestors to the actual people living today and try to have a serious conversation about today irl, not last season on handmai

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            "Three guesses which party that was. And the first two don't count."
            It was the modern Republican Party that fought for slavery, and they still do. The name was different then, but that only fools idiots like you.

            "Or we could refrain from ascribing the worst excesses of their ancestors to the actual people living today and try to have a serious conversation about today irl, not last season on handmaid's tale."
            But why would we when they so loudly brag about their own bigotry? This is literally who you are,

        • Yeah, they are currently officially a step away from the mineshaft shelter theory of Dr. Merkwurdickliebe, unofficially and IRL it is of course "grab them by the pussy, they'll let you do anything".

        • I have a few fixes to suggest, though they don't involve any "going back" to the bad old days. Rather, moving forward by applying our more culturally enlightened values more fully.

          For starters, the laws and norms around marriage need to be updated. A lot remains that was cooked up back when "women were property" as you mentioned. Now that marriage is truly a union of equals, it needs to legally fit such equality. And, in particular, it needs to be a much safer thing to do than it is now, financially.

          As

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "They don't state it like that..."

          Oh yes they do. And don't forget child labor.

          It's a bit old at this point, but that famous "liberal" Jordan Peterson openly advocated "forced monogamy", where women would be forced to marry men not of their own choosing. JP's claim is that modern society's problem is that women choose their own mates, thus victimizing men. The solution obviously must be that men force women into relationships they don't want in order to bear children for incels. A literal Jordan Peterso

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "People have kids when they're optimistic about the future."
      True.

      "People not having kids is a vote of no confidence in society and its structures and institutions."
      False.

      "Want people to have kids? Refrain from giving them ample reason to doubt the sanity and good judgment of the self-proclaimed adults in the room."
      False. Make them poor. Poor people have higher birthrates, developing nations have higher birthrates. Wealthy nations have lower birth rates. Enslave the population and make them poor, then de

  • Will this make living in America any cheaper? More housing available maybe?
    • In Japan, what's happening is prices in Tokyo are zooming upwards [japanpropertycentral.com], while rural areas are dying [oyakata.com.pl] and the land and homes are worthless. (I love this quote: "abandoned schools, hotels, amusement parks or even islands or towns are becoming increasingly popular.")

  • They can do better (Score:5, Funny)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @02:30AM (#65089931) Homepage
    Ok, I guess I will get flagged as troll for this but...

    A decade? If Robert F Kennedy Jr is the next US health secretary I think you can achieve that milestone within 4 years.

    • You're assuming a brain parasite can't keep our bodies moving long after we would be declared medically braindead. I don't know why you make that assumption, RFK Jr already showed it is possible.

    • I was going to make a joke(?) about shortening that timeframe with another war, but I like yours better, haha!

  • Nice to see.

    This will especially be important for those that come after most of the aged have died off as in a world of A.I taking work most humans will have no work or income.

    Fewer numbers equals more chance of a UBI scheme actually working.

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