US Population Rate of Growth Slows

The US Census Bureau today released its latest population estimates for the nation and the states. There wasn't a lot of news in these results, but the New York Times made the best of it by noting that the rate of growth (0.7 percent per year) was low by historical standards.

It was the lowest rate in more than seven decades, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“The census projections to 2060 have us going down to half a percent because we’re an older population, and aging populations don’t grow so much,” Mr. Frey said. “If we have very sharp declines in growth, that takes a bite out of the economy.”

But, this is not an alarming trend. Indeed, I downloaded the Excel spreadsheets and noticed that the actual numerical increase in population of 2.3 million is essentially unchanged over the past three years, even if the rate of increase is slightly lower. We are continually building on a bigger base, and it is the numerical increase that matters in terms of resource utilization.

You can also see the residual of the old idea that more people is better than fewer people in the lamentations in the New York Times over the fact that New York may soon be overtaken by Florida as the country's third most populous states. This doesn't really reflect badly on New York, per se, since all of the northeastern states are lagging in population growth. Rather, it reflects the fact, shown by the Census Bureau data, that people continue to prefer the west and the south to the other parts of the country.

Demographics of Social Mobility

Earlier this month, President Obama got a lot of attention for a speech in which he emphasized the importance of renewing our national commitment to social mobility. The problem is not just that the top 10 percent of US earners bring in 50 percent of the nation's income. At least as important is that it is now harder than it used to be (maybe even harder than ever) to make it into that top economic rung of American society. Garannce Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic confirmed with the White House that the social science behind the President's speech came from a presentation made in 2012 by Harvard Political Scientist Robert Putnam of "Bowling Alone" fame. The point here is that social mobility needs to be the topic under discussion, rather than focusing on race and/or poverty. Bill Keller's Op-Ed in the New York Times defines the potential consequences of not doing something about the lack of mobility:

A stratified society in which the bottom and top are mostly locked in place is not just morally offensive; it is unstable. Recessions are more frequent in such countries. A widely praised 2012 book, “Why Nations Fail,” argues that historically when the ruling elites have pulled up the ladder and kept newcomers from getting a foothold, their economies have suffocated and died. “The most pernicious fact of inequality is when it translates into political inequality,” said Daron Acemoglu, a co-author of the book and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist. “That means our democracy ceases to function because some people have so much money they command greater power.” The rich spend heavily on lobbyists and campaign donations to secure tax breaks and tariff advantages and bailouts that perpetuate their status. Not only does a dynamic economy stagnate, but the left-out citizenry becomes disillusioned and cynical. Sound familiar?

One of the problems in trying to create policy initiatives to deal with the lack of mobility is that we actually don't have good data on the topic. Recognizing this deficiency, the National Research Council organized a workshop on how to create such data and the report just came out on Christmas Eve and will hopefully be a blueprint for new data collection that will allow us to monitor how various policies are (or are not) working.

A root cause (if not the major cause) of the slow down in social mobility will be very complex to deal with. The manufacturing jobs that existed for a few decades and helped to create a broader middle class have been transferred to developing countries where growing populations work for lower wages, or have been transferred to robots or computers that also work for lower wages. These jobs are unlikely to return, so a whole new segment of the economy needs to be invented. My own suggestion would be that this new segment be oriented toward redefining our use of resources--figuring out how to quite literally redefine what we mean by our standard of living. This almost certainly will require some government initiatives, but there is no reason why a public-private partnership could not be created to move such an idea forward. This could even be wrapped into the unemployment benefit issue by creating a new "conservation corps" of people who are working on such programs at government expense until they can be picked up by the private sector.

Uruguay--Demographic Country of the Year?

Some time ago one of the commentators on this blog asked me: "Can you provide for your readers a handful of countries with positive and hopeful demographic profiles?" Most of the news--by the nature of news--is bad, not good, so the positive stories tend not to rise to the surface. Still, this question has been rattling around in my head, and I was inspired this week by The Economist's decision to name a "country of the year," looking for a country that not only deserved commendation but offered up a model for other countries to emulate. Their winner was Uruguay:

Several countries have implemented it [legalized gay marriage] in 2013—including Uruguay, which also, uniquely, passed a law to legalise and regulate the production, sale and consumption of cannabis. This is a change so obviously sensible, squeezing out the crooks and allowing the authorities to concentrate on graver crimes, that no other country has made it. If others followed suit, and other narcotics were included, the damage such drugs wreak on the world would be drastically reduced.
Better yet, the man at the top, President José Mujica, is admirably self-effacing. With unusual frankness for a politician, he referred to the new law as an experiment. He lives in a humble cottage, drives himself to work in a Volkswagen Beetle and flies economy class. Modest yet bold, liberal and fun-loving, Uruguay is our country of the year. ¡Felicitaciones!

The demographics of Uruguay are also remarkably modern and stable. It is a country comprised largely of descendants of Spanish and Italian immigrants, but has a better current demographic profile than either of those countries. Its total fertility rate is below replacement level, but not much below, and its decline to that level has been very gradual over the years, so there are not huge dents in the age structure. Life expectancy is only three years lower than in the US and although the country is slowly aging, the UN still projects its population to increase from its current 3.4 million to 3.6 million by mid-century. The population is almost entirely urban and well-educated. Like all of its South American neighbors, Uruguay experiences net outmigration (especially to Spain, Italy and the US), but this may change with the new laws passed in 2013. Overall, then, if you want a good demographic profile, take a look at Uruguay.

2013 Was an Historic Year for Refugees--and That's Not a Good Thing

As 2013 winds down, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has taken stock of the year and concluded--just on the basis of data for the first half of the year!!--that 2013 will likely be the worst on record for refugees and internally displaced persons.

Figures for the first half of the year already show it to be one of the worst periods in decades for people fleeing violence. The biggest cause of new displacement is the fighting in Syria, which shows no sign of abating.
Syrians accounted for eight out of 10 new refugees – people who cross a border to seek safety. Tens of thousands of people also fled violence in Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.
The number of refugees fleeing their countries in 2013 may turn out to be the highest since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the report says.

As the long and devastating civil war plays out in Syria, I couldn't help but think here at Christmas time about the long and devastating war close by geographically, but separated by two thousand years, as the Jewish population of Judea tried to rid itself of Roman rule. This didn't turn out well, of course, and the Wikepedia entry concludes that "[T]he Jewish–Roman wars had an epic impact on the Jews, turning them from a major population in the Eastern Mediterranean into a scattered and persecuted minority."

Demography Rules Christmas in Japan

OK, full disclosure, I have not been to Japan at Christmas, but the internet news sources indicate that the Japanese, who are almost entirely not Christian, celebrate Christmas as a commercial, but obviously not a religious holiday. Christmas Eve is apparently a time for gift-giving among families, in particular. Now, here's the punch line to the story. If you are the practical kind of person who gives someone what they need, instead of what they want, diapers for older people will outsell diapers for kids. I'm not making this up. This comes from Andrew Revkin's blog for the New York Times:

Tokyo is still mostly a bustling, crowded supercity. But the quiet and emptiness I saw with my son this fall in the greenway adjacent to the Imperial Palace grounds in Tokyo could be more commonplace later in this century given the aging of the Japanese population. Indeed, a recent government study, cited last year in the Wall Street Journal’s Japan blog, projected that the city population “will peak at 13.35 million in 2020 — then drop steadily to 7.13 million in the year 2100.”
But the indicator of demographic shifts that got me writing today was a diaper trend noted by my longtime contact on population and immigration, Joseph Chamie. Here’s an excerpt from the Asahi Shimbun article he forwarded:

As Japan’s birthrate declines and its population ages, the country’s future can be foreseen in diaper sales.
Over the past decade, production of adult diapers, essential for caring for the elderly, has doubled in Japan.
Unicharm Corp., a major diaper maker, saw sales of adult diapers outpace infant diapers in the last fiscal year ending March 31, while forecasts indicate the same will happen throughout the industry over the next few years.
At an outlet of Tomod’s drugstore in Kawasaki, infant and adult diapers take up roughly the same amount of shelf space.

And, by the way, Joseph Chamie isn't just somebody. He is the former Director of the United Nations Population Division, so in fact we do pay attention when he says something like this.