Born in the USA, But Fewer

National Center for Health Statistics

It seems that generally, richer countries tend to have the most severe projected contractions of future population growth. As China’s economy has improved, it has joined that statistic. Even with 1.426 billion people in 2022, China is now the second most populous country in the world, behind India. UN demographers predict that the PRC’s population has now peaked, and with a seriously declining birth rate is expected to drop to 800 million by the end of the century. India’s population is projected to continue growing. Growth rates in Europe are also falling, as Japan leads Asia in population decline. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare tells us that that island nation’s population will fall from a present 128 million to 86.74 million by 2060.

Where social safety nets and government retirement benefits are available, the number of active workers needed to support a graying population continues to decrease in those well-heeled countries. For businesses for which profit growth is predicated on population growth, a least a population that is able to sustain purchasing power, none of this is good news. The fastest sustained population growth continues only among the less educated, more impoverished countries. We are already witnessing severe labor shortages in the major developed countries, notwithstanding a rising recessionary trend.

According to Forbes.com (11/11/20), foreign born workers are twice as likely as native born Americans to create new jobs here, both through self-employment and companies that hire workers. This obviously creates a significant cadre of new consumers, taxpayers and very significant contributions to our economy as a whole. Since the “replacement rate” requires somewhere north of 2.1 live births per child-bearing couple, we have to live with the reality of numbers well-below that threshold in Japan, the United States and throughout Europe.

Yet the fiercest barriers to immigration – an obvious and necessary component to economic growth – come from Japan and the United States and slightly less from Europe. During the Trump administration, and carried on during Biden’s tenure, the United States has not just clamped down on asylum seekers but on highly educated/trained potential immigrants (and their families) that our STEM tech world desperately needs.

In short, UD immigration policies shoot us in our national foot in two ways: we forsake the organic population growth that drives our GDP (no longer achievable by our birth rate) and we exclude experts that we truly require in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

How bad is it here? Well, start with the above chart provided in Cara Tabachnick in a January 12th report from CBS News. “American women are having fewer babies, and they're having them later in life, government figures released Tuesday [1/10] show. Data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's statistic arm — showed a sharp decline in fertility rates in recent years, with most women having an average of 1.3 babies and an increasing percentage giving birth at age 35 or older…

“Simply put, most women are just waiting until they feel they are ready. Reasons for the delay are varied, the report found, and include the pursuit of higher education, increased labor force participation, changes in familial values, relationship instability and financial considerations. The research has also shown that women who wait tend to be in a better position economically and in more stable home environments. Almost half the women who gave birth at age 30 or older had a college education.

"The big question we should be asking is, are women that wait going to be able to have the babies they want?" said [Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health].” 1.3 babies is way lower than the above replacement rate.

There are many other factors that may account for this trend. Expensive student loans are delaying marriage and young people’s having families. Housing affordability also a factor. The cost of raising a child has never been higher in the United States, even corrected for inflation. But what is particularly troublesome is this populist notion to deprive a nation built on immigrants, one that cannot internally create a sustainable population, into a country dedicated to excluding additional immigrants… people who typically work hard and are grateful for being given the opportunity to live and work here. See also my December 28th A Nation of Immigrants that Hates Them blog.

“But the drops in birth rates have prompted concerns about negative consequences for the tax base and workers in an aging American society… ‘We need to have a long-term stable workforce to sustain our economy,’ said Dr. John Rowe, a professor at Columbia University specializing in aging health policy and management. Policy shifts on immigration and technology and changes in work and retirement requirements to permit individuals to stay productive in the labor force for longer periods could all help mitigate the effect on the economy, Rowe said.” Just a little common sense added to our immigration policy would produce a materially different path. But because of strong resistance from conservative elected representatives, we have not had meaningful immigration reform since the Reagan era.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are hypocrites stewing ourselves in our own scalding anti-immigrant broth.