A TALE OF TWO FUTURES: CHANGING SHARES OF U.S. POPULATION GROWTH (NPG Booknote)
- Ed Lytwak
- March 1, 1999
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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A TALE OF TWO FUTURES: CHANGING SHARES OF U.S. POPULATION GROWTH
An NPG Forum Paper
by Ed Lytwak
March 1999
Between 1950 and 1996 the driving force behind U.S. population growth dramatically shifted from native-born natural increase to immigration and births to immigrants. These changing shares of U.S. population growth were really a tale of two demographic futures. In a future that could have been., sustained sub-replacement fertility by most native-born Americans would have led to a population that peaked at around 250 million. and then began a gradual transition to a smaller, optimum size. The other future — the one that present trends are taking us toward — is a U.S. that, by 2050, will have almost 400 million people and a population growing with no end in sight. One is a future chosen by the majority of Americans who voluntarily limited their family sizes to below replacement level. The other is a fiacre determined by politicians in Washington, D.C., whose immigration laws have lead to the highest sustained immigration in our nation’s history.
The second half of the Twentieth Century was a period of unprecedented and remarkable population growth in the United States. By 1950, the U.S. population had grown from the nearly four million people enumerated in the nation’s first cen-sus (in 1790) to over 151 million. In less than fifty years, from 1950 to 1996, the population of the United States exploded to 268 million. This increase of over 1 16 million people represented the largest population growth of any fifty-year period in U.S. history and more than all population growth in the first one hundred and fifty years of the nation’s history. The 116 million new Americans added between 1950 and 1996 were 41 million more than the 75 million Americans added to the population in the previous fifty years, as well as 41 million more than the entire U. S. population at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
The second half of the Twentieth Century also saw a remarkable shift in the demographic shares accounting for most of the growth. During this relatively short time, the driving force behind U.S. population growth dramatically shifted from native-born natural increase to immigration, both directly and indirectly through births to immigrant women living in the U.S. The period began with a baby boom and bust during which U.S. total fertility fell from an average of 3.5 births per woman to below replacement level (the average 2.1 births per woman necessary to replace the mother and father) in less than one decade. The boom and bust was followed by a sustained period of sub-replacement fertility by the native-born population, which continues today.
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