NYT: The Population Bust Is Coming Sooner Than Anyone Is Prepared For

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border_humper

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Start with the number that drives everything else. The American fertility rate has fallen below 1.6 children per woman, a record low. Replacement rate, the level that merely holds a population steady before immigration, is about 2.1. If the current trend in shrinking births continues, it’s likely that the U.S. population will largely stop growing in the 2030s, and begin to decline in the 2050s. Peak America may come before millennials meet their grandkids (if they have any).

There are two major pieces of wishful thinking in the flights of fancy that underpin American population forecasts. The first is immigration. The Census Bureau assumes the United States will have an annual net migration (immigrants minus emigrants) of about one million immigrants through the end of the century. The United Nations and Social Security trustees assume about 1.2 million immigrants a year throughout the 21st century. None of these forecasts are plausible. Net migration under President Trump will most likely turn out to be near zero, and he won’t be the last immigration restrictionist in our nation’s highest office.
Moreover, birthrates are collapsing across the entire planet, not just here at home. The supply of would-be migrants will shrink as more countries run out of young people, and the skilled ones every aging country covets will be fought over. With most countries staring down the same cliff, and with emigration from the United States rising, permanent high net migration is more of an aspiration than a forecast.
But the second act of wishful thinking has an even bigger effect. Many forecasters are assuming that current low fertility rates are temporary, that women are merely delaying having children rather than forgoing it entirely. But this isn’t true: Research shows that delays in childbearing are usually not made up, and, anyway, estimates that take deferred childbearing into account have fallen by just as much as the headline fertility rate.
Up until quite recently, the Social Security trustees’ main scenario assumed that fertility rates will rise from now until 2050, and stabilize at 1.9 children per woman. In 2023, the Census Bureau predicted that fertility rates will only gradually decline from 1.64 to 1.58 by 2075. Spoiler: Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already shown a 1.57 fertility rate for 2025. The U.N. expects that the U.S. fertility rate will be flat at about 1.65 through the entire 21st century. To its credit, Social Security trustees released new numbers just last month that revised their expectations down to 1.75 in 2050, but that is overly optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office is more realistic, but even it predicts that fertility will decline to 1.53, then stabilize.
What evidence supports these predictions? Birthrates have fallen almost continuously for nearly 20 years, an entire generation. They have fallen through good economies and bad, through Republican administrations and Democratic ones, through every tax credit and child-care subsidy.
No matter what you believe to be the cause of falling birthrates, that decline is unlikely to spontaneously reverse: There’s no marriage boom on the horizon; young people aren’t switching off their phones; housing isn’t about to become vastly more affordable; and the decline of religion may have paused, but no great religious revival is in sight. Drawing up budget plans on the assumption that we have essentially reached our lowest fertility point, despite other rich countries’ rates being even lower, is nonsensical. I suspect that this error persists because the alternative is too dismaying to put in a government table.
Strip out the imaginary baby boom, put in realistic migration rates for the Trump presidency and the rest of the 21st century, and the trajectory of our population is more ominous. If birthrates continue to decline as they have been doing, then fertility will fall to 1.35 children per woman in 2050, and 1.15 by 2100. In that scenario, population growth will be anemic in the 2020s and 2030s, fall to essentially zero in the 2040s, and then, starting in the mid-2050s, experience a long, grinding decline. Each generation will be more than 30 percent smaller than the one before, the work force will shrink beneath the retirees it has to support, and the American century will give way to American contraction.
Only one state in the union, South Dakota, still has a birthrate near the level that would hold its population steady on its own. Every other state is below the line. Most are far below it. In parts of Kentucky, the state where I live, the effects of demographic decline are all too familiar. Entire towns left to be reclaimed by weeds and rust; real estate values drifting downward every year, destroying the saved-up wealth of retirees; school consolidations that force kids to ride on a bus for over an hour; out-migration by innovative and entrepreneurial people; bitterness among those left behind to watch their civilization rot.
None of this is destiny. Forecasting population isn’t like forecasting the weather: People can choose to marry and have children. The reason I can tell you now that the population will peak in the 2050s is precisely because I am describing the path we are on if nothing changes. We can try to prevent this from happening.

Closing a gap this size will not happen through a few thousand dollars of tax credits sprinkled on young families; we have tried pocket change, and pocket change has failed. It will take serious money aimed at the people doing the work of raising the next generation of Americans, an end to the marriage penalties woven through our tax and welfare codes, a surge in building family-size houses on par with the one during the last baby boom, and a culture that treats children as a future worth having rather than a lifestyle expense.
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Turning off the immigration tap is going to create unknown benefits.
 
Upvote 18
All these potential falling population number scare tactics piss me off. They are just designed to get people willingly rooting to be replaced by 3rd worlders. Let's say population drops down to levels of 1976 or even 1926, so what? It was still millions of people back then. 50 or 100 years from now there could be another population boom that gets things right back up. It's all nonsense to worry about. Places with higher population are not automatically better places to live.

The other tactic they use is saying the tax base will lower so apparently that is a problem. To that I say taxation shouldn't be designed like a ponzi scheme anyway. Taxes should support the people paying them and that's it. The government shouldn't even be involved in retirement income or social benefits. How about we have strong communities, families supporting each other, and personal responsibility as the principles that get people through tough times and old age.
 
A lot of people (boomers) don't want to believe the government is actually evil. They will justify the mass immigration. I've seen them say things like "Well well the younger generation didn't have kids! That's why we have the immigrants!"
They are naive and don't want to believe the government is deliberately screwing us.

They also seem to forget that we were told for decades to "not have kids because of the environment" and "the world is overpopulated" , there's tons of subtle propaganda that was pushed on us also.
TV shows like "Teen Mom" and "16 and Pregnant" showed how "horrible" it is to have children (And no, girls don't suddenly turn this around and want to have children once they are out of their teens, they keep these beliefs into adulthood) and the producers of both those shows were Jewish.
The majority of the propaganda is aimed at women. "Don't have kids it will ruin your career" "You're a loser if you don't get a university degree" etc.

There was also a book called "The Population Bomb" written by a Jew and an organization called "Zero Population Growth" whose explicit goal was to "Reduce the birth rate among Americans"
The low birth rate was purposely designed and engineered by evil governments and then they turn around and claim "Well why didn't you have kids? (even though we told you not to) Now we need more immigrants!"



On the positive side, Conservatives, and rural people, have much higher birth rates than liberals. If you look only at rural communities, farmers, and people like Amish / Mennonites, they have above 2.1 fertility rate.
 
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@TOPDAWG That's what I don't get.
"I'm a boomer, I live in a nice big house, please import a million more poor people, delivering SkipTheDishes for minimum wage, and living in a garbage slumlord basement apartment with 10 other guys"

So what's to stop them from just killing you? You think these immigrants don't have massive envy and hatred towards the White boomers? OF course they do. In the future, Eventually, there will be laws passed to expropriate the land / wealth from White people. That's what happened in Zimbabwe and is happening in South Africa.
 
@FreeJames I watched them melt my step dad's brain. He was one of the first guys to warn me about corrupt government, told me all about the animal farm.

Wanted me locked out of hospitals and grocery stores during covid.

According to his 85 year old ass CBC is the best news there is and he is as politically active as he can be.
 
Who would have thought that turning the world into a giant digital panopticon would have negative effects on the birth rate. At the end of the day humans are mammals and it takes a lot of stresses to make mammals not reproduce.

On a happier note, less people will finally break the government grift machine and force wages to rise.
 
Honestly, feminism has killed dating. My God if you ask a woman out or try to make any moves that's considered sexual harassment now what fucking guy wants to risk that?

Try to move to second base shit You might catch an assault charge.

Before it was women Oh man he tried to make a move on me and I told him piss off and that would be the end of it. Now it's days Oh my God a guy tried to rape me I'm a victim.
 
I am reminded of my time as a bouncer walking a long a ledge in our smoke pit. I am reminded of a random hand reaching out and grabbing my crotch. I also remember the laughing drunk girl saying she just had to touch it.

I guess it's only sexual harassment when I do it.
 
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