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Below is a recent blog post that Marian Starkey, VP for
Communications, wrote for our website in response to the recent flood
of articles bemoaning a so-called "baby bust" and the attendant
catastrophic consequences that await us as a result.
Thank you as always for your commitment to population stabilization. I
welcome comments and feedback at
[email protected], or you can leave
a public comment on the blog post directly on our website here.
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U.S. Population Growth Hasn't Ended (Unfortunately), Despite What Some
Reporters Say
While it's exciting to finally start seeing articles about
population in the news, unfortunately, most of them are bemoaning a
so-called U.S. "population bust" and "demographic
stagnation." The vast majority of top-ranked comments (select
the Reader Picks tab) on these articles support our position: that
fertility decline and slowing population growth present opportunities
for the U.S. to reduce climate-changing emissions, lift people out of
poverty, close the inequality gap, and protect our
country's-and our planet's-natural resources
for future generations.
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This spate of recent hand-wringing articles is a response to the
release of the 2020 U.S. Census results and the release shortly
thereafter of the 2020 provisional births data from the CDC. The 2020
Census counted 331,449,281 Americans, up from 308,745,538 in
2010-that's 22.7 million more Americans needing housing,
heating and cooling, transportation, food, jobs, education,
healthcare, and so on.
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And yet, The New York Times printed an article asserting that
there's a "population bust"; a
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Bloomberg columnist said, "Global depopulation is the looming
existential threat that no one is talking about";
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The Economist wrote that "global shrinkage looms"; and
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The Washington Post wrote about "the challenge of population
stagnation" in one editorial and warned that "without
robust population growth ... there is no prospect of repairing
the fraying social safety net that supports an aging population of
retired Americans" in another one. A quick Google search yields
dozens more examples from the past couple of months.
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Threats Imaginary and Real
Some journalists would have you believe that the following [rare]
developments are cause for panic: In Germany, housing developments
being razed to make way for parks, and shrinking towns becoming more
attractive to home buyers due to their smaller scale. In South Korea,
illiterate elderly people attending school to learn how to read
alongside children, and nature growing up through playgrounds no
longer used. In Europe, forests regrowing in unused fields, and a
recent resurgence of large carnivores. In Japan, Asian black bears
scavenging nuts and fruits in old fields and neglected gardens of
rural towns losing residents.
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The horror.
Seriously, though. "Population decline"-which is
nowhere near happening at the U.S. or global level-would be a
boon to everyone's quality of life, to say nothing of the
benefits to the natural world. Yes, there will be challenges to how
economies are structured. But those challenges are far easier to
address than the permanent environmental tipping points that humanity
is already beginning to breach and that we'll only exceed more
frequently as world population continues to grow.
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Our world is already overpopulated. Just imagine how much less stress
we'd place on the natural world if there were only half as many
of us. Even when that was the case in 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. raised the alarm about the "modern plague of
overpopulation."
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Opportunities
Americans burn more fossil fuels each day than many poor countries
burn in years. There are important and compelling reasons to
facilitate slower population growth in low-income countries, of
course. The bulk of our advocacy work focuses on slowing growth in
high-fertility countries least equipped to meet the needs of rapidly
growing populations. But there's hardly a country on earth that
rivals the U.S. in terms of per capita consumption. And we don't
see the majority of Americans volunteering to give up their cars,
single family homes, air conditioning, or fast fashion any time soon.
Perhaps the easiest way for Americans to reduce our ecological
footprint is for us to continue having smaller families and slowing
the number of people we add to the ranks of future consumers in this
country.
It is, after all, people who consume natural resources, destroy
wildlife habitats, and produce climate-changing greenhouse gas
emissions. For the sake of our planet and of future generations,
shouldn't we celebrate the slower addition of new consumers and
polluters?
And a Solution: Invest in Children
If it's the economy that concerns the authors of the above-cited
articles, we urge them to look at ways to improve per capita
productivity. We should not pin our country's economic future on
the population Ponzi scheme. The United States has more than enough
people-and we're adding over 1.1 million more every year.
What it lacks is adequate investment in its population of young people
who will be tomorrow's workforce. And, of course, we need to
educate the next generation to think of themselves as citizens, not
consumers.
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We have 10.5 million children growing up in poverty-let's
invest in the futures of those children so they can become healthy,
well-educated, productive adults. Better educated people also tend to
contribute to slower population growth through lower fertility.
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Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote,
"America simply needs more babies," (we disagree!) and
said that we're pushing "toward population decline"
as a result of our "fertility collapse." Provocative
click-bait phrases aside, he spends most of the piece outlining how
this country can make parenthood more affordable-and of course,
child tax credits and welfare benefits mean children grow up with more
financial security. It's always strange when we find ourselves
agreeing even partially with someone like Mr. Douthat, but in this
case, he's got it right: Investing in children is a plan that
should align folks from both sides of the aisle. Healthy societies
don't need more people; they need people who are more productive
who make what we consider to be better choices.
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If we ensured that every baby born in the U.S. had access to
high-quality health care, childcare, education, and nutrition,
we'd be a much more productive society than we would be simply
by adding more numbers to our ranks. And this could provide a sound
pathway to population stabilization.
This Is a "Good Crisis"
We published a book several years ago about these topics and more. You
can read and download the PDF version of The Good Crisis: How
Population Stabilization Can Foster a Healthy U.S. Economy for free
here. Hard copies can be purchased on Amazon.
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