(Roughly) Daily

… And increasingly across the globe, starting in the developed world, we’ve been doing a better job of that. Indeed, some are beginning to worry about a kind of problem that the modern world has never faced– depopulation.

History Today offers a fascinating snapshot…

During the 1930s and early 1940s, many Americans held off on starting families because of the economic insecurity of the Great Depression and uncertainty of World War II. But the prosperous postwar era led to an increase of births between 1946 and 1964 that gave the baby boomer generation its nickname. Over this 19-year period, the booming birth rate helped the U.S. population grow by more than 50%. The country’s demographic makeup shifted so rapidly that by 1960, there were 64.2 million Americans under age 18, out of 180 million overall — a whopping 36% of the population. For context, in 2022, an estimated 22.4% of the U.S. population was under 18. 

General fertility rates in the baby boom era peaked in 1957 at 122.9 live births for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 — that’s 4.3 million babies that year alone. The general fertility rate took a nosedive throughout the 1960s as the birth control pill became more widely available and women entered the workforce at much higher rates. By 1970, the general fertility rate was 87.9, and the much smaller Generation X was well underway.

The baby boomer generation didn’t reproduce at the same rapid clip as their parents, but because there were so many of them, they still produced a lot of offspring. Indeed, 1990 — the year all those 1957 babies turned 33 — was another banner year for births, with 4.2 million millennials entering the world, despite a general fertility rate of just 70.9…

Consider these population pyramids from the U.S. Census Bureau:

This picture is of course in aggregate: some locales (e.g., Utah) continue to grow and are “younger”; others, like Alexander County, Illinois are much “older.” And globally, the picture is even more mixed:

The global population reached nearly 8.2 billion by mid-2024 and is expected to grow by another two billion over the next 60 years, peaking at around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. It will then fall to around 10.2 billion, which is 700 million lower than expected a decade ago. However, changes in global population are uneven and the demographic landscape is evolving, with rapid population growth in some places and rapid ageing in others…

… The world’s overall fertility rates are dropping, with women having one child fewer on average than they did around 1990.

In more than half of all countries and areas, the average number of live births per woman is below 2.1 – the level required for a population to maintain a constant size.

Meanwhile, nearly a fifth of all countries and areas, including China, Italy, the Republic of Korea and Spain, now have “ultra-low fertility,” with fewer than 1.4 live births per woman over a lifetime. As of 2024, population size has peaked in 63 countries and areas, including China, Germany, Japan and the Russian Federation, and the total population of this group is projected to decline by 14 per cent over the next thirty years…

While the slow growth or decline of populations is occurring mainly in high-income countries, rapid population growth will occur in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.

Specifically, Angola, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, and Somalia, very rapid growth is projected, with their total population doubling between 2024 and 2054.

This population growth will increase demand for resources, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and, combined with poorly managed urbanisation and rising living standards, it will worsen environmental impacts.

Climate change, a major challenge, affects these countries the most, where many rely on agriculture – and food insecurity is prevalent.

In countries including India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and the United States [our inherent decline offset to some extent by immigration… at least until now], population is also expected to increase through 2054 and could potentially peak in the second half of the century or later…

– U. N. World Population Prospects 2024

Implicit assumptions of a growing population underlie many– if not most– of the decisions we’ve made about everything from social policies (e.g., social security) to business plans (e.g., growing markets).

Populations grow for some combination of three reasons: fertility is above replacement level, people live longer, and/or immigration swells the ranks. For quite a while, the U.S. was hitting on all three cylinders; more lately, on the latter two. But recently, life expectancy has stalled.

Immigration is currently strong (and, as noted above, keeping U.S. population growth positive), but it’s looking increasingly uncertain: political energy to restrict (indeed, to undo) immigration is high, even as the pressures of climate change and political upheaval are increasing numbers of people from around the world hoping to find a home in the U.S.

If, as Comte is said to have suggested, demography is destiny, then what is ours? “In 1960, more than a third of the U.S. population was under 18.”

Apposite: “Why people over the age of 55 are the new problem generation,” gift article from The Economist

* Bill Gates

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As we dig into demographics, we might send thoughtful birthday greetings to Robinson Jeffers; he was born on this date in 1887. A poet renowned both for his longer (narrative and epic) verse and his shorter work, he was an icon of the environmental movement. His philosophy of “inhumanism” argued that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. 

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