Nearly 75% of U.S. counties lost population last year as deaths outnumbered births, data shows

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Social Issues

Nearly 75% of U.S. counties lost population last year as deaths outnumbered births, data shows

'That's unheard of in American history,' said demographer Kenneth M. Johnson of the Census Bureau findings

By Fredrick Kunkle
Today at 12:00 a.m. EDT

Almost three-quarters of all U.S. counties reported more deaths than births last year, a development largely caused by the pandemic, which contributed to a dramatic slowing in the nation's overall population growth, according to data released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

Low fertility rates, which have persisted since the end of the Great Recession, and the nation's continuing demographic shift toward an older population also combined to create the smallest population increase in 100 years, said Kenneth M. Johnson, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of New Hampshire. He said he expected the data to show a natural decrease but was surprised at its scale. Natural decrease occurs when a population records more deaths than births.

"I think one of the most important findings is the fact that almost 2,300 counties had more deaths than births in them. That's unheard of in American history," Johnson said.

He said the coronavirus's impact, along with longer-term trends that limited population growth, had created "a perfect storm," and that one would have to go back at least to the 1918 flu pandemic to find anything like it.

{snip}

By Fredrick Kunkle
Fredrick Kunkle is a reporter on the Metro desk. He has written about transportation, politics, courts, police, and local government in Maryland and Virginia. Twitter https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/03/24/census-population-counties-cities-covid/

---

From the source:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2022

Over Two-Thirds of the Nation’s Counties Had Natural Decrease in 2021

MARCH 24, 2022
RELEASE NUMBER CB22-51

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/population-estimates-counties-decrease.html

[cinematicdiversions]

1. Without immigration the US population is shrinking

That has been true for a while. Long before the pandemic.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. I checked. It seems you have a point.

FEBRUARY 14, 2020 12:21PM

Census Finds U.S. Population Will Decline Without Immigration

By David J. Bier

The U.S. Census Bureau released a report today that concludes that population of the United States will fall by 2060 if the government stops immigration. The report—which projects the future American population under different immigration scenarios—also finds that “higher international immigration over the next four decades would produce a faster growing, more diverse, and younger population for the United States.”

{snip}

A Changing Nation: Population Projections under Alternative Migration Scenarios

FEBRUARY 2020
REPORT NUMBER P25-1146
SANDRA JOHNSON

Introduction

Download A Changing Nation: Population Projections under Alternative Migration Scenarios

The 2017 National Projections Main Series, released in September 2018, presents one scenario for the future population. These projections will only hold true if the assumptions about births, deaths, and migration match the actual trends in these components of population change. International migration is difficult to project because political and economic conditions are nearly impossible to anticipate, yet factor heavily into migration movements into and out of a country. While we make no attempt to predict future policy or economic cycles, we do recognize the uncertainty surrounding migration and the impact that different migration outcomes could have on the future population. To account for this, we have produced three alternate sets of projections that use the same methodology and assumptions for fertility, mortality, and emigration but differ in the levels of immigration that they assume: high, low, and zero immigration. This report compares the results from the three alternative scenarios of projections and the main series, focusing on differences in the pace at which the U.S. population grows, diversifies, and ages.

Others in Series

{snip}

[keithbvadu2]

18. Japan has a similar situation but they are even stricter in their immigration policies.

Japan has a similar situation but they are even stricter in their immigration policies.

[Botany]

2. " ....more deaths than births last year, a development largely caused by the pandemic..."

The horrific nightmare in the Ukraine and the global pandemic caused by C-19 are in large part because of
Donald Trump being installed by Putin and the Republicans who knowingly went along that act of war against
America.

[lagomorph777]

20. "Ukraine" not "the Ukraine" please.

The latter is Putin's derogatory term, similar to the way Repubicans call us the "Democrat Party".

[GB_RN]

4. The Economy, At Least For Millenials...

Never recovered. So they’ve been put in a position where it’s unaffordable to have kids: Home prices are unaffordable, rents are skyrocketing (both thanks to commercial property investors), wages haven’t kept up with inflation (for >40 years), and college is unaffordable without loans (so now they’re in debt upon graduation). And regressive politicians (read: The GOPQ) both in Washington and at the state level don’t give a flying fuck, and so, have no interest in solving these issues. They’d rather scare people with the bogeymen of illegal immigrants, CRT, antifa, BLM, transgender athletes etc., etc., ad nauseam.

This same pile of shit is about to fall on the heads of Gen Z, which is my son’s generation, too.

Damn all banksters and the GOPQ to the hell I don’t believe in for what they’ve done to this country and for what they continue to do to it. Goddamned, power hungry, greedy bastards.

GOP = Greed Over People

[modrepub]

13. Part Of The Problem

is the distortion the bankers and politicians have build into the housing market. Basically the bankers have pushed for government support of the mortgage market. Bankers obviously want more and larger loans that will be backed by the government should something go wrong. A lot of these mortgages are then sold for whatever money the market feels they're worth and the banks take that money, less some cut, and repeat the process.

That's kind of the way it's been for awhile (remember the housing crash when interest rates were rising and home values were falling? and remember who got stuck with bailing the credit swap markets out? Yea, I do). But what's mind boggling to me is that over the last 50 years or so of this "model" housing fallacy, banks and government pushing home ownership, is that the houses we are building are much larger than what was built for the Baby Boom generation. The bigger you push, the more money you make on the financing side. Now take that increase in house size (square footage) and square that with shrinking family sizes over the last 50 years and you've got a great example of how some well-connected folks can distort the market (for their own benefit). The rest of us are saddled trying to buy housing stock that +4,000 sq ft and all the bells and whistles and not something that is smaller and more "right sized" for the current generation.

[GB_RN]

15. Check Out This Past Sunday's "60 Minutes" (03/20/22)...

Leslie Stahl interviews the head of a corporate real estate investment company. His outfit buys houses, sight-unseen, fixes-up as necessary, and then rents them for a premium (they also own a shit ton of apartment complexes, IIRC). Rental prices on the houses they've bought have gone up 30% from what the previous owners were charging in the last year, and his company owns tens of thousands of homes here in the US - primarily in the Phoenix, Charlotte, Atlanta, NYC, and Jacksonville (FL) areas.

When his company buys a house, it's almost as soon as it goes on the market, always for cash and thus, preventing anyone else from having a shot at buying it. It also has the effect of raising prices in the neighborhood beyond what anyone else can afford. This asshole said he was making the "American dream more affordable", if you can believe that!

Leslie Stahl totally failed in her interview because she never once pushed him on his talking points, basically allowing this clown to use the interview as a commercial.

[raccoon]

26. Thank you for Pointing that out about housing size!

Most of the time that is not even mentioned but of course that is at least one factor in the astronomical cost of housing.

[IronLionZion]

5. It could make a difference in some close elections

some swing congressional districts and states have pretty low margins. So if they lost mostly republicans, then they will have strengthened the herd.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. There was Pew Research report done 10 years ago about the birthrates

post-"Great Recession" - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2011/10/12/in-a-down-economy-fewer-births/



But the thing to note here is that peak group just prior to the recession (one of my nieces is in that age group) and how many there are of them. When the report was done, they were children that were 4 - 5 years old. Now they are 15 - 16 year old teens who might soon be actively child-bearing, assuming their parents/society give them the support system needed to do this.

There was Pew Report done a year prior to the above-linked one that shows an earlier boomlet in the early-'90s and I know that group are currently parents (I have most of my nieces and nephews in that age group) - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/04/06/us-birth-rate-decline-linked-to-recession/



So these more recent periods are the last "bigger" boomlets since the last big boomer period in the '50s and it will be interesting to see how it goes for them. But there are some real structural and support changes that this country needs to have and that means "child care". It is near impossible nowadays based on the lagging wages, to have the old-fashioned "stay-at-home-mother (parent) " who is not "working for a salary", and is able to perform child-rearing duties for the non-school age children (infants/toddlers). I.e., with the work-at-home scenarios that have been implemented due to the pandemic, some occupations have that option - but it still goes back to the fact that whether the parent is in the office or at home - they are supposed to be "working".

[mathematic]

21. I bet the declining teen birth rate has more to do with this than anything else

You'll see variations due to historical "boom" generations reaching their peak childbearing years but the long term trend has been down and 90% (edit: I misread the chart... it's actually over 100%) of the drop from the peak to the great recession was due to the drop in teen birth rates.

Teen birth rates have dropped dramatically. If anything "dramatically" is underselling it:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/why-is-the-teen-birth-rate-falling/

Peak births 15-19 years old was in 50s @ 96.3.
In the late '00s it was 41.5.
In 2018 it was 17.4! I doubt it has been that low at any point in human history.

The article goes into some thoughts on what's caused the decline. I think a few reasons make the most sense.

In the 50s virtually all of these births were to married mothers. Now it's the opposite. So I think greater economic independence for women now is a big cause. More opportunity for women means less need to get married (especially when young) and that means fewer women are in situations where they're expected to have kids and be a homemaker when they're 18-19 (or 20, 21, etc but this data is just about teen pregnancy).

You also have greater access and use of birth control as well as legal abortion now compared to the 50s.


I think the biggest reason for the drop in teen pregnancies since the late 00s is the same as the reason we see the declining numbers of relationships between young people in general, which is the plethora of in-home entertainment. Kids just don't hang out with each other in person as much as they used to. Hanging out with your friends online is fine from a social connection perspective but you can't get pregnant like that.

To compare with your total birth rate charts, the teen birth rate dropped by 55 from the peak to the great recession. The total rate dropped by 65. 90% (edit: over 100%) of the drop in the total rate was due to the drop in teen birth rates. That's remarkable. There's a been a lot of speculation about economic hardships leading to fewer children, like you say. No stay at home parent available, wages not keeping up with home prices, and so on. But NONE of those things are relevant to the teen pregnancy decline, which, again, accounts for 90% (edit: over 100%) of the decline.

EDIT: I just took another look at the overall chart and I misread it the first time. Looks like the peak to great recession decline is 122 - 70 = 52, which is less than the decline in teen births. To restate, teens don't get pregnant any more, pushing their childbearing off to later in life when there is less time, at the very least, to have more kids. There is also a "one-time" effect of dropping the teen rate that drops the overall rate as the average childbearing ages shift higher (this effect goes away when the shift stops).

[BumRushDaShow]

24. The supposed "cut off" for the boomer age group

at 1964, upon a significant birthrate drop (depending on what source you look at) have had many suggest it had to do with the wider availability of the-then recently approved "the (contraceptive) pill(s) ".




That availability was pre-Roe vs Wade. But then recently, with massive outreach to teens about contraception and the OTC approval of Plan B (often dubbed "the morning after pill" ) back in 2013, this has been the same sort of game-changer that the original hormone-derived pill(s) did post 1964.



And as an aunt of some younger nieces/nephews, including one who just turned 16 - I will say that they DO still "hang out", although when they do, they are all on the cell phones texting each other and those not there with them at the moment. Their cell use and texting and Tik Toking and other stuff is no different than me and my friends who would be on the phone for hours (although we had the one "house phone" but I do remember one or two of my friends who had 2 phone lines in their house with different numbers ).

[Scrivener7]

7. Fewer people is better for everything.

[OrangeJoe]

22. Absolutely

While it is a tragedy when lives are cut short due to disease or really any reason the fact is if we are ever going to reverse climate change and halt species extinction there needs to be many fewer people on the planet. Clearly the prevention of births is the only humane way to get us to a sustainable future. Economists fret over the impact of declining birth rates, and their concerns are real, but they are nothing compared to the costs of limitless growth.

Future generations will be doomed to an environmental disaster and wars over limited resources if we don't get this train moving in the right direction and get the population down to a sustainable level.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

31. You are my kinda guy OrangeJoe ... couldn't have said it better myself (nt)

[Farmer-Rick]

8. So is that a decline in total population?

If you have more people dying then being born, that is a decline in existing population numbers, unless you have immigrants coming in. Wow, we have had a decline in birth rate consistently but a decline in total numbers was not expected to happen for about 30 years or so.

Wow, this will be interesting.

[70sEraVet]

10. It will be MORE than interesting, when there are fewer workers paying into Social Security

and more retirees wanting to be fed and housed.

[Farmer-Rick]

12. The old system where the current generation of workers pays for the current retirees

Changed when Reagan and Greenspan changed Social Security.

They doubled taxes and expanded the Social Security Trust Fund. The Baby Boomers double paid. They paid for their parents' retirement and their own, where half went into the trust fund for the Baby Boomers own retirement and half paid for our parents. They were the first and only generation pay for 2 retirements. The draining of the trust fund is expected. It is only a temporary, pass through fund to hold excess funds for Social Security.

People younger than Baby Boomers are only paying for their own retirement. They put it in. And when they retire, they take it out. That is how it should work. There should be very little held in the trust fund. Technically your Social Security taxes should be cut in half. But as all taxes on the Middle Class, once taxed always taxed.

So a shrinking population won't hurt Social Security.

The GOP likes to pretend otherwise and they frequently combine Medicare and Social Security to make it appear as if Social Security is in trouble. But Medicare has problems because of our broken healthcare system. Fix our overpriced and inadequate healthcare, and Medicare would be fine too.

[OrangeJoe]

23. Pop the cap

Make all income subject to Social Security withholdings, not just the first $140,000 or so, and the problem is solved.

[Farmer-Rick]

28. Absolutely

It's the only logical solution.

[Scrivener7]

25. We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined.

We spend more on healthcare per capita by far than any other country.

There are plenty of places we can improve our finances and handle a development which is better for everyone on earth.

[nycbos]

9. Bring out your dead.

Sorry. With all the depressing news in the world I thought we needed a laugh when it comes to another depressing story like this.

[keithbvadu2]

17. I'm getting better.

Best line

[Chainfire]

11. It is all of that godless birth control.

Republicans are planning new legislation whereby all white women, over 15 and under 50, must be either pregnant or nursing. A new program , based upon the former German Lebensborn e.V will be implemented which will be "manned" by the incels, thus solving two problems with one piece of legislation. The program motto is Home, barefoot and pregnant as God intended.

[Ford_Prefect]

14. These are the deaths we know of that are linked to COVID. How many more went unreported or classed

as by other causes, the way many were in Florida and other denial states? How many more are on an accelerated path to death brought on by damage from COVID?

[LittleGirl]

16. So few couples could afford children

In the past decade. And there’s a slight trend in couples choosing not to have children so no big surprises here.

No healthcare, pandemic happening, no maternity leave, parental leave, job insecurity and inflation means people don’t have the necessary funds to reproduce.

[sybylla]

27. Bingo.

Also, don't forget strapping 20- & 30-somethings with massive student loan debt along with weakening worker rights (=shitty work environments).

[LittleGirl]

29. Yup, forgot that one! nt

[lagomorph777]

19. Wanna guess which counties had the highest death rates?

[LiberalFighter]

30. Hopefully in the right counties.

[Samrob]

32. Another issue to be aware of when voting is underway. Verification in those red areas where

scrutiny and monitoring will be lax if the GOP has its way. But in those inner city and suburban areas they will be out in full force checking and matching voter IDs etc. Counting the ballots should require even more scrutiny.