Birthrates have been plummeting in the United States, as they have all over the world. While some debate why, many of us agree that if you just made the world a better place to live, we would all want to put more babies in it. But alas, the drive to make things better simply does not exist right now, and therefore, no babies.
The problem is getting so bad that the United States is rapidly approaching a grim demographic milestone. According to a new Congressional Budget Office report, by 2030, more Americans will die each year than will be born. From that point on, population growth won’t be powered by babies, but by immigration.
The shift is driven by two forces, neither of which is good for our long-term demographic health. The first is that Americans are having fewer children, and the second is that the country is letting in fewer immigrants.
Fertility rates have been dropping for years, and the CBO now projects that the total fertility rate will drop to 1.53 births per woman in 2026, well below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. Native-born women are expected to hover around 1.50 through mid-century. Foreign-born women still have higher birth rates, but those are also falling.
U.S. Deaths Expected to Surpass Births by 2030, Per Reporter
At the same time, the population is getting older. More Americans are entering their death era, and it’s happening so rapidly that we are reaching a demographic crossover point where deaths outpace births. That is quickly followed by stagnation, and eventually, population decline, which is projected to occur after 2056.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been happening all over, particularly in places like Japan, Russia, and China.
None of this would be too big a deal if we just relied on the one thing that, historically speaking, always pulls demographic to climbs out of their slump: immigrants. They add working-age adults to the economy and boost birth rates. But the CBO says immigration projections have been sharply revised downwards.
There are major economic implications here. The number of retirees will grow as the pool of workers supporting Social Security and Medicare shrinks. The CBO says that these are just projections, not gospel written in stone.
But if things keep trending the way they are, the United States is heading toward a future in which our population numbers will be directly tied to border policy.
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