Will 2022 Be the First Year of U.S. Negative Population Growth?

• Nathanial Gronewold
• February 14, 2022
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
• 1 Comment

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WILL 2022 BE THE FIRST YEAR OF
NEGATIVE U.S. POPULATION GROWTH?
An NPG Forum Paper
by Nathanial Gronewold
February 2022

Abstract: America’s population growth came to a virtual standstill last year. Experts point to COVID-19 and say the nation will resume its relentless push to 400 million Americans just as soon as the ongoing crisis ends. But it’s plausible that America could decline somewhat in population numbers this year as the pandemic rages on. And even though population increases will likely resume at some point, America’s growth trend may be coming to an end much sooner than expected thanks in part to the pandemic.

Annual population growth in the United States now stands at a record low. Will COVID-19 send it into early reverse? It’s possible, though far from certain.

On December 21, the Census Bureau reported that the United States’ population expanded by just 0.1% last year,
“the lowest rate since the nation’s founding.” It’s an astonishing milestone, with Census citing “decreased net international migration, decreased fertility, and increased mortality due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic” as causes. 

To clarify, the nation’s population still grew last year. Despite a media panic following this latest data release the Census Bureau said total U.S. population expanded by 392,665 people in 2021, a figure slightly greater than the population of Iceland. More population growth can be expected in subsequent years depending on the depth of our economic malaise, how long the pandemic continues, the lethality of emerging variants, and the degree to which immigration resumes. But this growth is still the slowest ever, well below the average two million additional people per year or so witnessed for decades. And as I’ll argue below, U.S. population growth could be dragged lower or even turn negative in 2022 as America begins Year Three of the COVID-19 pandemic….Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.

One Reply to “Will 2022 Be the First Year of U.S. Negative Population Growth?”

• Kathleene Parker

  February 25, 2022

  As a long-time population activist and as a sometimes Forum contributor, I feel I don’t see ANY potential for anywhere near NPG in the U.S. until immigration is reduced, and under Biden, it’s being increased, with–in so many ways–him doing everything to keep the flood high by limiting ICE and other border enforcement. First, there’s chain migration. Still unreformed, it means an ongoing flood of the relatives of those already here and huge resulting population increases (as defined by Edwin Rubenstein in his October 2021 FORUM paper). Second, “border encounters,” (as the same October 2021 Forum defines), increased from 78,323 in January 2021 to, by July exceeded 200,000, and that represents those who were caught or somehow came into the system.
  It is also important to be very careful and very analytical of the impact of COVID, which has been sensationalized, distorted and inflated in every way media can think to inflate and distort, with it telling that in ALL the recent headlines, to my knowledge NO news organization headlined something as news worthy as it gets: a 92-percent COLLAPSE of COVID between January 2022 and late February (Source: CBS News’ website.) because Omicron–depicted by media as deadly–in fact is a far weaker strain that, for example, quickly EMPTIED South African hospitals earlier beyond capacity. And comparisons to the H1N1 Spanish flu are absurd. Yes, the net numbers are similar but the 1918 flu hit a nation of fewer than 80 million people. While media shrilly compared recent COVID deaths to that net die off, that is a false narrative. COVID, to date, has killed roughly 1/3 of one percent of the U.S. population, while the H1N1 killed between 3 and 4 percent of the U.S. population. (Data then was not always trustworthy, although I did a college history paper describing Colorado towns that had to turn to burying the dead in trenches.) More, and the author did allude to this, H1N1 took the young and healthy without hesitation, while COVID has tended far more to the already sick, aged and weak–or people who would likely soon contribute to the U.S. death rate anyway.
  Also, deaths from COVID were, yes, a total of almost one million, but they AVERAGED about 450,000 to 500,000 a year, another nuance Big 6 Media couldn’t be bothered with in their agenda to frighten and sensationalize. But, even in the short term, considering Biden’s ongoing welcome mat out to the world–despite the warnings of iconic Black Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D.-Texas) to Bill Clinton that over-immigration isn’t “enriching the world, it’s impoverishing” the United States–and since immigration, not births is the U.S. growth-driver, I see little likelihood that at the next census in 2030 of other than the same demographic trend as each decade since immigration was thrown wide open in 1965, or population increases of 25 million to 30 million a decade, although a looming water catastrophe in the American Southwest might possibly get through to even Biden that he must pull in the welcome mat and start addressing critical resource issues in ours the world’s 3rd most populated nation behind only China and India.