America is facing a significant problem: population growth collapse. With people having fewer children and immigration becoming increasingly controversial, we are seeing a dramatic drop in population growth that could have severe implications for the country. Population growth is essential in an industrialized country like the US to support retirement systems like Social Security and Medicare. So, how did we get here, and what are our options?
The current trend of US population growth
The population of the United States is growing at a much slower rate than in past decades. This is primarily due to a declining fertility rate. America’s fertility rate has been dropping steadily since the 1970s. People are having fewer children, on average.
Not so coincidentally, the 1970s are also when wages began stagnating and growing further apart from the cost of living. Many young Americans today insist not being able to afford a home is one of the main reasons they’re not starting families.
With most of them having been either young adults or children during the Great Recession, millennials and Gen Z are overly cautious of financial catastrophes. As such, it’s unsurprising that both these cohorts feel they lack the economic security to start having families. While it’s a good sign to see mature decision-making regarding having children, the threat of population collapse still looms.
The threat of a declining population
This population growth collapse presents an immediate problem for America. Our society relies on having an ample number of workers to fund older people’s retirement.
As mentioned above, Social Security and Medicare programs are only sustainable if enough younger people are paying into them. Without the needed population growth, the money required to support these programs will become increasingly difficult.
As the number of people in the workforce decreases, so does the amount of money available for these benefits. This means that fewer people will be able to access them in the future.
What can help?
The most obvious solution is to increase immigration. While illegal immigration is obviously off the table, there are still processes for immigrants to legally enter the US. America’s birth rates are reaching scary lows. Canada, our friendly neighbor to the North, grew by a million residents last year. The bulk of that growth was fueled by immigration.
If we don’t have more family-friendly policies and increase immigration, we might not have a bright economic future, much like Germany, Italy, China, and Russia, all of which face devastating population decline in the coming decades.
