U.S. Demographics are in Transition and We Have to Adjust

The demographic metabolism of the United States has been creating a lot of anxiety over the past several years, ultimately helping to engineer the election of Donald Trump, who ran on the promise of building border walls and ending immigration, especially from non-European countries--essentially a throwback to the discussions in the 1920s that led to the National Origins Quota system that cut off a lot immigration to the country just as the Great Depression was getting under way. For much of the 20th century the United States was dominated demographically by WASPs--white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But that has changed fairly dramatically over the past few decades--a trend that is bound to continue, as I noted a few days ago, based on the latest Census Bureau projections. The latest National Geographic has a lengthy story detailing the ground-level experience of these changing demographics, focusing especially on the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a place that had been decimated by the loss of coal-mining and factory jobs. 

Hazleton was another former coal mining town slipping into decline until a wave of Latinos arrived. It would not be an overstatement to say a tidal wave. In 2000 Hazleton’s 23,399 residents were 95 percent non-Hispanic white and less than 5 percent Latino. By 2016 Latinos became the majority, composing 52 percent of the population, while the white share plunged to 44 percent.

That dizzying shift is an extreme manifestation of the nation’s changing demographics. The U.S. Census Bureau has projected that non-Hispanic whites will make up less than 50 percent of the population by 2044, a change that almost certainly will recast American race relations and the role and status of white Americans, who have long been a comfortable majority.

In a period bookended by the presidential elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the question of what it means to be white in America has increasingly taken center stage.

Keep in mind that Hazleton came to fame not because the city embraced immigrants, but because it wanted to legislate specifically against undocumented immigrants.

Just over 10 years ago, Hazleton was thrust into the national spotlight when the mayor, now U.S. congressman Lou Barletta, urged the city council to pass a first-of-its-kind ordinance called the Illegal Immigration Relief Act. It set steep penalties for those who hire or rent to undocumented immigrants. It was accompanied by an ordinance that sought to make English the official language of Hazleton. The laws were introduced amid rising cultural tension in the community, which was seeing an influx of Latinos, many moving from New York and New Jersey.

A lawsuit stopped that ordinance from going into effect, buttressed by the testimony of my good friend, Professor Rubèn Rumbaut, who laid out the statistics showing that immigrants--whether undocumented or legal--were far less likely to commit crimes than were U.S.-born residents. 

The point is that no matter what our opinion about them might be, demographic, economic, and social changes are occurring in the United States--indeed the entire world--and there is no immediate end in sight. We have to adjust, no matter how painful we think that might be. That's the world that lies ahead of us.

Did the Low Birth Rate Kill Toys R Us?

This past week saw the closure of all of the Toys R Us stores in the U.S., following the company's closing of its stores in Britain. A story in the NYTimes emphasized the debt the company had piled up in a leveraged buyout in 2005 by a group of private equity firms. Competition was also fierce, especially from e-commerce such as Amazon. But the Washington Post picked up on a distinctly demographic aspect of the company's problem--the low birth rate. In its own statement, Toys R Us had stated the following:

The decrease of birthrates in countries where we operate could negatively affect our business. Most of our end-customers are newborns and children and, as a result, our revenue are dependent on the birthrates in countries where we operate. In recent years, many countries’ birthrates have dropped or stagnated as their population ages, and education and income levels increase. A continued and significant decline in the number of newborns and children in these countries could have a material adverse effect on our operating results.

The Washington Post reporters then dug into the numbers, comparing trends in the number of births to the company's revenue. Here's one of their graphics:

So, you can see that revenues tended to track births, if you believe these data. The problem is the number of births in the U.S. between 2010 and 2016 did not change in the way the above graph suggests. Here are the numbers from latest report by the Centers for Disease Control:

I'm sorry, but I don't see the trend. Toys R Us wasn't paying attention to the pattern of births, I suspect. They were focused on other things and that's what sunk them.

Arctic Ice is Melting Fast--This is Not Good

It has been many years now since we had the first confirmation of the rapid melting of Arctic ice. But every time I see a new story about it, I am startled to remember what a big deal this is--and who is responsible. The latest information comes from an op-ed in today's NYTimes written by Dr. Cecilia Bitz, who is a professor of atmospheric sciences and director of the Program on Climate Change at the University of Washington.

In late February, a large portion of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole experienced an alarming string of extremely warm winter days, with the surface temperature exceeding 25 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. 

These conditions capped nearly three months of unusually warm weather in a region that has seen temperatures rising over the past century as greenhouse gas concentrations (mostly carbon dioxide and methane) have increased in the atmosphere. At the same time, the extent of frozen seawater floating in the Arctic Ocean reached new lows in January and February in 40 years of satellite monitoring.

The extreme Arctic warming this winter is a foreshadowing of things to come. On our current greenhouse emissions trajectories, the Arctic Ocean is expected to be ice-free in late summer by about midcentury or possibly as early as 2030, depending on natural variability. The impact will extend beyond the Arctic, adding to warming and sea level rise throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

If you have read my book, or any number of other books and articles, you know that the proximate cause of these rapid climate changes is human activity. Over the last century we have grown in unprecedented numbers and have used resources and polluted the earth and atmosphere in unprecedented ways. We are not on a sustainable path at the moment. We know what to do (stop population growth and use resources only in a sustainable way) but as a group we can't yet come to grips with those solutions. For additional useful information on these things, I recommend you visit the website of UK-based Population Matters. 

Immigrants the Key to Continued U.S. Population Growth

The U.S. Census Bureau just released its latest projections of the U.S. population. This is called the 2017 series and, like the previous 2014 series, it builds on the base of the 2010 census. Of particular note, of course, is that despite the gradual aging of the U.S. population (which is mainly what has been hyped in the press), we are projected to continue growing in number, from 326 million this year to 404 million by 2060. This is true even though the fertility rate remains low, largely because of the projected continued net immigration into the country. Todd Gardner very astutely picked up on this particular graphic from the Census Bureau's news release about the projections:

Notice that if we assume a continuation of approximately one million new immigrants per year, then by 2030, the immigrants will make a bigger contribution to U.S. population growth than will natural increase (the excess of births over deaths). And, of course, since migrants tend to be young adults, they also contribute more to the births than to the deaths during the first several years after their arrival. What could change those ratios? Obviously a change to immigration policies could slow down the flow of migrants. An improvement in the death rate among the very young and the elderly (the ages where the U.S. lags behind other rich countries) would push up the rate of natural increase, as would an increase in the birth rate. The latter is probably the least likely of those three scenarios.

New Additions to the PAA Oral History Project

I am taking the liberty today of copying an article that I wrote for the latest issue (Spring 2018) of PAA Affairs (the quarterly newsletter of the Population Association of America), since I think that this stuff is important!

The PAA History Committee is very pleased to let you know that two new interviews of Past PAA Presidents have been added to the PAA Oral History Project archives on the PAA website: http://www.populationassociation.org/2016/06/09/paa-oral-history-project/ .

The latest interviews are with Dr. Andrew Cherlin (PAA President in 1999) and Dr.Arland Thornton (PAA President in 2001). Both of them are self-described family and household demographers. Here’s how Cherlin describes the field of demography as he saw it in his early years in the profession:

In the 1960s and early ’70s, the PAA was still about the population problem, how to reduce the birth rates. And a huge proportion of all the people who attended the meeting or were presenting papers were presenting on fertility—some on mortality, because we wanted to get death rates down. Fields like family and household demography and also migration were very underdeveloped. There were a lot of changes happening right at that time in the American family. And so there was a good group of people who were interested in these changes. And I think that group attracted people like Arland Thornton and me at the time.

To be sure, Thornton tells a similar tale:

I first went [to a PAA meeting] in 1972—I think we met in Toronto that year. It would be nice to see that program. I think that program would have been dominated by international family planning. I don’t think there was very much on mortality or on migration. I think that there would have been things on these issues, but not a lot. I think the main focus was on family planning. I think that the 1972 session where Paul Glick had a paper in a session on the family was the only one on the topic we now call family demography. And now, PAA is much bigger. The list of topics is much, much bigger. I think I would have had a little bit of a hard time in 1975, ’6, ’7, ’8, saying that divorce was part of demography. I think some people would have defined it as being outside demography. But with Andy [Cherlin] and Linda [Waite] and—oh, I didn’t mention Larry Bumpass and Jim Sweet before--it all soon became part of PAA. And studying school and mobility and occupational attainment, I don’t think there was very much of that at PAA in 1972. But Dudley Duncan was doing it, and if he was doing it, it almost had to be part of PAA. I think the expansion of topics at PAA has been amazing, and I’m delighted. I like demography being a big tent.

He also adds some advice for young people starting their careers:

I tell graduate students and post docs—this might be worth saying—to pick things to study that you’re passionate about. Do things that captivate you, that are enjoyable, that are fun. And if you do that, you’re going to work all the time, but it won’t seem like work.

The PAA Oral History Project is a unique source for the history of demography. It currently includes interviews with 51 of the 71 demographers who have served as president of the PAA since 1948. The project began in 1973 as the brainchild of Anders (Andy) Lunde. In 1988, Jean van der Tak replaced Andy as PAA Historian, and Jean was tireless in her pursuit of interviews until 1994, when the job of PAA Historian was handed over to John Weeks. He subsequently formed the PAA History Committee, whose current members include Karen Hardee, Dennis Hodgson, Deborah McFarlane, and Emily Merchant.