The U.S. population will soon start falling, some say, and that means trouble ahead.
I say: Speed the day. So do a lot of people in Colorado and other Western states, where a surging population is paving over beloved vistas and threatening water supplies.
My only fear is that it won’t actually happen – that the U.S. population, now 296 million, will continue to explode. One U.S. Census projection has the United States adding 100 million people by 2040.
But let’s consider the delightful (to me) possibility that the American population is about to shrink. The idea horrifies Phillip Longman, a fellow at the New America Foundation. Last year, Longman published a much-read piece in “Foreign Affairs” on the problems of a shrinking world population.
Some demographers predict that the global population will peak at 9 billion by 2070, then start falling. I see that as good news but not great news. Today’s world head count is nearly 6.5 billion, which means that humankind would grow by 2.5 billion people over the next 65 years. That’s the equivalent of adding six times the combined populations of the United States, Mexico and Canada. Doesn’t sound like much of a Baby Bust to me.
Folks who see declining birthrates as a problem warn that societies everywhere will stagger under the weight of their aging populations: There will be fewer workers to support the old people. This analysis ignores that these workers will have fewer children to care for, which means the total burden of dependents would not be as high as some expect.
In calculating the costs of an older society, Longman and others define an elderly person as someone who is 65 years old. Excuse me, but 65 is not old anymore. An American who turned 65 in 2000 was expected to live nearly two more decades.
People in their 60s and 70s play tennis and drive across the country. If they can do these things, they can also work. And given America’s collapsing private pension system and low savings rates, they may have little choice. So a lot of people the demographers are counting as future retirees will actually be workers.
Longman says dwindling population growth works against “innovation.” How so? With fewer people fighting over resources, he says, “there is less incentive to find ways of making a gallon of gas go farther, or of increasing the capacity of the existing infrastructure.”
Well, what’s wrong with that? With fewer people, there’s more of everything to go around. We innovate to solve problems. We shouldn’t invent problems to make reasons for innovating. And in any case, a falling population creates new challenges: mainly finding ways to run society with fewer workers.
Some demographers have likened the expected population decline to the losses in medieval Europe during the Plague. Such comparisons make for good melodrama, but a drop in birthrates is somewhat different from mass death caused by a devastating disease.
And the Plague had one good outcome for the survivors: It ushered in a golden era for the working man and woman. The drop in Europe’s population caused a labor shortage, allowing the exploited workers to bargain for a better deal. Serfdom disappeared.
And what about immigration? Birthrates are falling all over the globe, including in countries that supply immigrant labor for others. That means industrialized countries might have to compete for a tightening world supply of immigrants. Some say that would be a terrible thing.
Terrible for whom? It certainly would not be terrible for the immigrants, who would be able to command better pay and greater respect.
And an America with fewer immigrants would not fall apart. To be sure, some adjustments would have to be made. People who want to hire help might have to pay more for it. Some folks might have to mow their own lawns. Life would go on.
Harvard economist George Borjas says regions now dependent on immigrant labor would just become more like Iowa. There are relatively few immigrants in Iowa, but the state does not lack for hotels, fast-food restaurants and other amenities. Iowans somehow get the job done.
A falling population would lead to cleaner air, cheaper housing, less traffic, higher wages, lower stress. Now, if only it would happen.
Froma Harrop is a Providence Journal columnist. Contact her by writing to fharrop@projo.com.
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