There is an answer here, but the author misses it. The author notes that the only other time deaths outnumbered births to this extent nationally was during the Great Depression, but that the present situation "is without the obvious economic explanation". Wrong. Having children is very expensive for young parents, especially working class parents, but unlike prices real wages haven't risen in decades, and now a whole generation of millennials is confronting a future that looks pretty bleak compared to the one that their parents faced. They're not having children for the same reason they're not buying homes or any other big ticket items: they can't afford to do so, and as Thomas Piketty's work shows the post WWII boom was an anomaly and present situation is a return to the historic pattern of capitalist development that produced the Depression itself. I don't think we can assume that the magic of the marketplace is going to solve this problem of social reproduction all by itself if we're just patient enough to wait for it.
Millennials will move to the suburbs when they have children in order to escape lousy schools.
Be patient. The sky isn't falling, no matter how many times Trump haters say it is.
1
The issue is two fold first manyBoomers moved to the outer suburbs because schools were not infected with the issues City public schools faced such as gangs, teachers and schools spending more time dealing with problem students.
The recent growth in population has been in immigrant largely Latino who need housing where there are plenty of lower wage jobs. The second issue is that the weather in the North East is brutal in winter and miserable in summer
1
What we are seeing is a bit of economic and social engineering that is going awry.
Grover Norquist, the dark wizard of the anti-tax right, along with many others has professed his admiration for the Victorian period in Britain. This was a time when Britain was at or near the top of a narrow, apex pyramid as ruler of a vast empire that covered half the world.
Even more relevant at home in Britain the narrow pyramidal structure was replicated (but of course resting atop further layers of a non-British base below giving even the working class there a comforting sense of worth). There was little social mobility, the percent of individuals in a generation who rise significantly, or more importantly FALL socially and economically in their lifetimes.
People *knew their place* and stayed put in it. And the wealthy felt deeply comforted that they were superior in every way as evidenced by a nice piece of circular reasoning.
What changed? Broader-based educational opportunities for the energetic and clever, better food and medicine, and a lowering of tolerance for the inept sons of privilege led to a healthy/shockingly unacceptable(?) social fluidity.
This must end.
And so it did. Higher education and other necessary social goods that drove social mobility are being priced out of reach. The result will be/already is the familiar, stable pyramid of yore.
But . . . a concurrent drop in births (birth control) and in immigration is creating a nasty economic crunch. Oops.
1
If educated women are more free to choose and they choose to have less children isn't that a good result? Isn't this beleaguered Earth crying out for less people consuming its resources? Do we expect endless growth to be a long term answer to anything but immediate economic issues? If Japan is learning how to manage a leveling off in it's population then so should we. That's all I'm saying right now.
9
Can I just say how much I hate animated maps or infographics that don't let you freeze them at one year--or at least that don't stand still at the latest year?
12
The obvious answer is wage stagnation. I doubt it's that many fewer people wish to have children, they just feel like they can't afford any, or as many as they'd like.
16
Massive student debt following you almost to retirement age. Exploding health insurance costs. Stagnant wages or minimal and meaningless increases. Decaying underfunded public schools with lowered standards. A government that claims with big fanfare to have given you a tax cut but which has quietly eliminated the personal exemptions to pay for a massive tax cut for already cash flush corporations, thereby having ripped up the social contract that fostered the creation of the American dream in the first place. Virtual elimination or private pensions to look forward to from employers, leaving no prospect for the average American of future security. Gee, who wouldn't want to pop out babies? Anybody with a brain.
19
Yes, part of the equation is that millennial are opting out of exurban life styles, but I suspect the real reason is more simple. People move to exurbs late in their careers, where mcmansions, telecommuting, consulting and second careers are all part of the equation. They are too old to have babies.
4
Deaths apparently outnumber births in Horry (OH-ree) County, SC, where I live, but that hasn't stopped growth. The county has grown 300% in 30 years, from 100,000 to 300,000+ people, and will soon be 400% more populous than in the 1970s. While we have many attractive reasons for people to move here, we are also suffering under the influx. Our landfill is close to the end of its useful life, but there is no mandatory recycling here. Our schools are bursting at the seams, but taxes are extremely low and people oppose any tax increases. Roads need building and repaving to carry the torrents of people, but again, no taxes to pay for them. Many doctors have moved here, but some of them appear to marginally competent at best and there are too few specialists for our population. I beg you all, please fix the places where you live now and don't move to my Southern backyard.
6
Student debt is a red herring that refuses to die. The average debt for public and private schools is around $30k. Less than 5% of all college graduates have debts over $100k.
Please stop using this canard as an explanation for any and all millenial behavior. Young people do not want to migrate to new states and then live in the sparsely populated exurbs, that is the ultimate point of the article
8
It comes down to ideology, not economics. Arguments about how expensive it is to have or raise children (or get an education that allows you to have or raise children) fall flat when you realize the social democracies of Europe also have abysmal birth rates, even with generous subsidies for education, family leave, childcare, etc.
The political left half of western civilization has spent the last 50 years telling people it was good or fine or acceptable to be single, to be promiscuous, to have an abortion, to use birth control, to get divorced, to be childless, to be homosexual, etc. Just about everything, in fact, except to be part of a traditional family with multiple children. Now you're shocked when you realize the population took you up on your advice?
Here's a novel idea: actually start encouraging people to have kids, and make those who do so and offer a stable upbringing for them your social icons rather than the man who thinks he's a woman.
5
its lot simpler than that - how about valuing children more by ensuring those that are teachers are treasured instead of demonized by politicians in need of a boogeyman to motivate voters. Raise the minimum wage so people can afford children. Ensure basic healthcare for all because little kids need medical care and poor parents can't afford it.
Reproduction is alot more powerful than you give it credit for - quit putting hurdles in the way and it will happen.
13
Forget it, this government and the people who voted it in hates children, schools, teachers and education itself. No other way to explain the rhetoric from the Republicans regarding the latest school shootings or the latest tax revision that limits deductability of student loan interest.
Florida IT, it is even simpler than that. Stop importing poverty from the 3rd world so that we can spend tax proceeds on those that pay taxes. Eliminate all the imported labor so that the native populace can get a raise. Get the government out of healthcare so that it can be more affordable. In fact, get the government out of every facet of our lives and it won't cost so much. This leaves hard earned dollars for families that earned it. We need to remove the hurdles we have already put in the way to make this happen.
My family left far eastern Suffolk County, NY for SC for a simple reason: taxes. NY is taxing the middle class out of existence. The final straw was a “commuter tax” on us even though we don’t commute.
Adios. We’ll earn and spend our hard earned money where it goes further.
8
Steven, congrats on your move to the South. As a new Southerner, please try to vote like a Southerner. Small government, no new taxes, less regulations, etc. Thank you!
1
Wages. Where american journalism fears to tread. People are not having babies because they can not afford to raise them and recognize that it would be irresponsible to ignore the cold facts of an american life - your wages will never equal the cost of living. This is why people are not getting married, not buying homes, not going to college. Wages. Unless people are paid a fair share of the profits they are producing for american business they won't form families, raise children, and all those other things that are considered "traditional". Hey Evangelicals, it isn't gay people that are causing the breakdown of the family, it's corporate greed. Oh but we can't say that. It must be something else, anything else. Perhaps because exploitation of workers is a marxist idea? Yes it is. But it is also an undeniable fact and the decline in cute lovable all american babies is directly attributable to it.
22
Arthur, thank you for your comment. I agree with you partially in that wages are too low and that corporate greed is a contributor. However, I believe the problem is attributable to the huge influx of immigrants that are keeping wages stagnant. Supply and demand dictate the price of labor and the supply is bursting at the seams. Seal the border, rein in the visas and wages will start increasing.
2
I grew up there. But not with a lot of money. I remember lots of wildlife, rivers, streams, and box turtles. Swarms of dragonflies so thick you could throw a net in the air and catch one.
I stopped by a year ago and saw a lot of guys in track suits driving obnoxiously. The rural off route 22character is long gone. What filled it is just a divorced Mercedes driving guy with a shaved head and high blood pressure. What would be the appeal to the young?
Perhaps I can dream of collapsing retirement McMansions, burrowed under by Star Nosed Moles, rising up and reclaiming the land with milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace.
Meanwhile, where I live now, the tree frogs are getting stuck in people’s garages, and frying in the heat, slowly decline. In another sixty years, will trees grow,out of those detached garage mega developments?
Where will we, the ever-settling suburbanati, go next?
4
Why would anyone want to bring children into this God forsaken country. And those that are here, the youth, realize this as well and numb themselves with drugs, many dying of overdoses.
No children till society is redeemed. So tell that to the puzzled demographer. Each child equals $200,000 college debt and no guarantee of health care.
If you like kids.... emigrate.
10
We all have our favorite hobby horses but cohorts of women not having the young uns like their mommies did is its own subject in economic development.
Singapore and South Korea (basically Seoul) are not American suburbs but they show the way to negative population growth.
2
An aging America ought to welcome energetic young people as workers, not matter where in the world they were born. Who do we think will fund our Social Security and Medicare? Who will tend us as we wait to die in nursing homes?
8
I agree with many of the comments about student debt and childcare cost but have not seen mentioned the place of technology. Most 30-40 year olds I meet in affluent DC have no interest in marrying. I believe the iPad changed everything. These same people don't read. They constantly watch Netflix or Hulu and mostly silly videos on YouTube and have fun with their friends. They are like eternal teenagers.
11
The advantages for the environment to a controlled shrinkage of the human population in low density areas are so many and so dramatic that we should do more, no less, to discourage living in these places.
The worries expressed here are unwarranted. Less people, and esp. less people in low density areas, is the way to go.
6
This statistical evidence confirms but does not really explain why.The map shows that births are outnumbered by deaths, not only in the outer burbs of NYC but in depressed hollers in West Virginia and among the mega-farms in Kansas.A large explanation is that in all of these places there are fewer economic opportunities for young people who want to form families.The costs seem to outweigh the advantages.The cost of obstetrics for a normal delivery is similar to buying a car.It is risky to own a house in these places where a downturn can linger and demand can be low if one wants to sell it.Young people are moving into cities where the jobs are and where transportation is cheaper.
What about cities as magnets for younger people?This is part of a global trend that UNESCO has tracked for years.
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_c/popups/mod13t01s009.html
The news is how this migration trend toward cities is playing out across the country, straining local jurisdictions.In wealthy suburbs outside of New York this means that in the future those communities will decline in wealth and status.
It makes one feel small to know one is part of a global trend, to find out that outer burbs are becoming irrelevant backwaters.But maybe their existence was a one-off from a time when energy and land were cheap and an earlier generation of young people of childbearing age were optimistic.It isn't easy to be young and optimistic today in post-industrial America.
13
One reason is that people no longer buy into the I've got to procreate myth. I have never had or wanted children. My life long friends that have kids have no more than two. Growing up as a baby boomer all the families in my neighborhood had four kids at least, but all the moms stayed home.
16
And the problem is?
Fewer people over time brings fear to planners and economists because there are no known market solutions for a long slide toward decreasing demand for products and services. Disinflation or negative inflation is not adaptable to the human brain. An entire society waiting to buy because tomorrow "It" will cost, nominally, less is not something human brains can deal with.
12
This isn't much of a surprise. It's expensive to be pregnant, to take time off from work to raise a child, to pay for child care if both parents work or if you are a single parent, to find decent housing in a community with good schools, to pay for college. And add college loans to the mix, car loans, rent or a mortgage, property taxes, unexpected medical expenses, an expected bout or two of extended unemployment and you have an environment that is anything but conducive to population growth via births.
But this is not a bad sign. The planet is overpopulated with humans. We're destroying our home. Fewer humans could mean less stress on ecosystems. That in turn could ease the crisis global warming could become. Fewer mouths to feed, less water needed, less food to be grown.
In America it might lead to a better life overall. As part of one of the larger birth years (1956-1962 or so) I and my peers did not find housing to be especially affordable near our jobs. We did not make as much as the earlier boomers. Our children saw the long commutes and may have decided they weren't worth it.
27
Older millennials are starting to have kids and realize paying 3 grand a month for a two bedroom apartment is not realistic. Then they move to suburbs . I know because I’m early 30s and seeing it happen. Maybe the exurbs are suffering but closer in suburbs are and will be in demand. So not just jersey city and Brooklyn...
9
After the Great Baby Boom Die-Off (which will include this writer) population might well be sustainable in the U.S., neither growing nor shrinking. Of course, people will not spread out nicely and evenly, so some places will rise and other will fall. As women realize we have a choice about being parents, more are choosing not to procreate or to have only one child if any. This is not going to stop being the case. As writer Edward Abbey said, "Continual growth is the rationale of a cancer cell." (He wrote something like that, anyway).
24
The pattern is bound again to reverse, as people inevitably seek lower housing costs.
6
I'm a white woman, and I found myself facing all kinds of barriers to having children. An endless search for a mate, as men made it clear that they did not want the responsibility of children. Not to mention men with addictions, or chronically without work, or abusive. Add in school loans. Uncertain employment. Odd hours of employment. Low pay. Finally, I found a job with a living wage, although it's exhausting. With time running out, I had a child, and this child is wonderful. At the same time, "dad" does not contribute, even though the child was not a surprise - and he said he wanted this child. Friends, family, and neighbors help very little. I have accepted this, and I take full responsibility for this child. But women cannot keep up this pace. I'm not surprised that the fertility rate is falling, and I see nothing to stop it from falling further.
68
Most of the single men in my neck of the woods are either in AA or NA or they should be.
Slim pickings out there.
7
With all due respect, Helen, give me a break. You depict virtually all American "men" as irresponsible, drug-addicted, lazy, selfish boors who want nothing to do with raising children or contributing to their well-being.
Perhaps you didn't know that the FASTEST growing demographic familial group in the nation are "single fathers raising children on their own." Perhaps you also didn't know that non-custodial MOTHERS have a significantly HIGHER rate on child support default than non-custodial fathers.
As a divorced and later remarried dad, I take great offense at your angry, bigoted depiction of men. I (and millions of other single dads) do everything possible to stay directly involved in the lves ofs our kids throughout his childhood and into adulthood. Like many of my friends, I never missed a child support payment for more than 14 years. I never missed parenting time except for one weekend when I was in the hospital following emergency surgery.
Yes, there are selfish men out there, as there are plenty of selfish women. Choose wisely and lose the expectation of failure next time, Helen. You might be pleasantly surprised. Good luck to you.
10
This. I would have had children if I could. However my relationships didn't progress towards marriage and family.
And I really wanted to have children and was anxious about this - to the extent that my gyn tried to cheer me with an offer of artificial insemination. (I didn't actually take her up on this. I am just saying...)
So it's not like women are just refusing to reproduce. It's a question of finding the right person. I wasn't going to just go stand on the corner and say, "Hi, sailor!"
3
My father, an only child, was born in 1920. His father was born in 1878. Both were born to rural farmers in Texas, although at the time of my father's birth his parents were pursuing oil patch work in Louisiana. A history of economic events in the U.S., the panics, the depressions, the wars, which afflicted my grandfather and grandmother as they grew to adulthood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is very similar to the 2008 Great Big Scary Recession. Americans just don't seem to want to procreate when times are tough. Catholic Americans are excepted, of course. The future belongs to the faithful.
9
People who have to pay back large school debt don't have the time or money to raise a family. Childcare is iffy and expensive. Schools are getting lousy. There are too many people on the freeways. Cost of housing is unreachable for starters. There you go, you're welcome.
45
What thoughtful person would have offspring in a world that increasingly appears doomed? Global warming, unabated population growth throughout the world leading to widespread warehousing of excess people with little hope of employment, unraveling of democracies everywhere, ...
29
David writes: "What thoughtful person would have offspring in a world that increasingly appears doomed?"
Actually, David, almost all demographers expect world population to DECLINE near the end of this century due to inexorably falling fertility rates on every continent except sub-Saharan Africa. (Did you miss the NYT story on that?) China officially discarded it's one child police about four years ago in anticipation of this looming decline and the growing imbalance between old and young.
Yes, environmental problems are real, but so is human ingenuity. In our 12,000 years of recorded history we have adapted to and overcome many "existential threat," from plague and drought to the "mini-Ice Age" of the 1700s and the wrenching transition from wood fuel to coal to oil and now onto fourth generation fuel sources. Pessimism and surrender never win, David.
15
Actually, it's my observation that people who want to be parents have kids. Period. They are not unaware of the world's situations, but what could be more worrisome that the new information after 1945 that the whole world could be destroyed? If people want kids, they usually have them if they can. It's just that there's more choice now.
4
We aren't the only ones. Japan, Europe, China, even parts of Latin America, are at various points on the same path.
14
The developed world and most educated people are weary of egregious overpopulation. The US and Europe should not be compelled to destroy themselves because other nations refuse to embrace family planning.
Saying that we must keep admitting millions of immigrants annually is not prudent and creates accelerated environmental destruction.
Letting our population naturally lessen or chill for a while is a positive.
26
People drowning in student loan debts are not buying homes in suburbs - they live in rentals near their jobs. They have fewer kids and they marry later if at all. But hey - the debt companies are earning tons of interest and the wealthy are richer- wasn’t that the plan?
Exactly how not to make America great off the backs of the future
36
Taxes are immorally high in Chicago and its suburbs and are only going higher because of waste and criminally high pension costs for public employees.
8
No, I disagree, it is not the poor who are affecting society but the fact that all the wealth belongs to very few.
10
Sprawl is expensive. You need more roads, which you then must patch, plow, and maintain. The water and sewer system and the electrical grid need to be run out far more miles per person. The school buses have farther to go.
It’s doable when most of the exurb is married couples in their prime working years. It’s doable when times are good. But if your exurb is emptying out, or if the average resident is now a retiree on a fixed income, you suddenly have problems paying for all that sprawl.
I don’t necessarily blame seniors for voting for lower property taxes. They can’t easily ditch their houses, and they have limited income. But it creates a death spiral. Young families won’t take on the 2-hour commute or the costs of maintaining a poorly-built particle board McMansion just to move to a place with underfunded schools and potholed roads. They stay away. The exurb ages and empties more. The tax base gets thinner. The schools get worse. Young families are driven away even more.
This is not to mention the problems elder seniors have with isolation and trying to age in place in suburban sprawl.
It’s a big mess. Immigration might solve it, but the exurbs are usually the Trumpiest and most racist places in America. After all, their original raison d’etre was to cater to middle-class whites who wanted a lily-white Mayberry on the cheap. The transition is going to be very painful, especially as the exurban Boomers reach their 80s and 90s.
28
The decline of economic growth by exporting industries to China as well as the repression of private commercial commerce by all levels of government doesn't breed an atmosphere of optimism. Who wants to have children in that economic environment?
9
Having children is very expensive, so many people decide to have only one. Also, many of us have discovered that life can be full and satisfying without having children.
25
Why would people have children when we seem to be heading to the end of the world? New potential for nuclear war, rising oceans, storms destroying entire communities, toxic air making a comeback, artificial 'intelligence' about to rule the planet: I know, let's have a baby.
Of course, most of the rest of the world is growing its population by leaps and whatever, soon unable to feed and hydrate billions of new people.
So, no worries!
17
End of the world? Get out and meet some kids- you saw many yesterday marching. I teach college-aged kids and do not fret about the future. It is bright. And if you think today is the end of the world, what did you think in the late 60's, 40's, 20's, or during any 10 year stretch in the 1800's? A lack of knowledge about history can easily lead one to thing these are the end of days. But a quick scan of history tells us that it's not. Ask an American leaving Oct. '62 (Cuban Missile crisis) to Nov. of 1963 (murder of JFK), if they'd rather live in the world today. OR living in Rwanda '94 or African Counties before development of AIDS/HIV drugs.
I recently asked a group of students to name an event that they ALL knew about and experienced. After a while, they agreed on it: The Election of Obama.
Hope is alive. Because it never dies.
2
Even in TX with its big inflows from other places, it is no longer common to see families in the public places as museums, beaches, restaurants or malls with 3-4 young children. It was a common sight in 2001. Most families these days in those same areas have 1 or 2 children with them.
New immigrants are coming in but even they are not having as many children.
12
So can we now stop letting developers bulldoze virgin land to build new suburban sprawl - especially in the southwest? There is plenty of housing stock for the population we have.
18
Something about the media fuss over lower birth rates feels sketchy to me. Is this the beginning of the handmaidens tale? A well-played excuse to discourage women from getting educations or having control over their bodies? Capitalist propaganda fanning flames that the world will end if we don’t keep growing? We’re speaking about bodies as statistics but these are human lives... it’s complicated.
But also it’s not complicated. People don’t want to live in the burbs anymore— duh, calm down.
14
The simple answer is that many people of childbearing age can’t afford to live in Hunterdon or other N.J. ring counties. Restrictive zoning, lack of affordable housing, NIMBY mentality and the peculiar N.J. institution of “home rule” underlie the premise of this article.
8
Maybe a strong predictor would be the fact that too many of our younger adults are starting their professional careers and lives $100,000+ in debt?
Realistically, how do they get ahead?
They know the scam already and how capitalist vultures are eating our young ( & old).
17
Fewer people want to drive everywhere (work, grocery store, coffee shop, restaurant, entertainment), and that is a huge reason why exurbs are becoming increasingly unpopular.
Who wants to spend hours sitting in traffic on a clogged highway every single day of her life? It's absurd.
Yet, city planners cannot manage to comprehend this, and keep pushing bigger roads further outward as the solution.
These enormous highways cut our cities into sections, preventing those who want to walk or bike from crossing the city efficiently, and spilling more and more polluting traffic into the metro areas.
Many, many people want to be able to walk or bike everywhere, but poorly planned sprawl makes that impossible.
Austin has recently started building small cities within cities - mixed used developments, where shops, offices, parks, and entertainment mingle with closely spaced single-family homes, duplexes, and apartment/condominium buildings. Most importantly, sidewalks are required in these developments, which allows residents to take care of business without ever having to set foot in a car.
Sadly, these developments are not affordable for the average person, so they don't help young people (or older folks, for that matter) whose education debts are high and whose salaries are stagnant.
20
I think there are several things happening:
- For the most part, people don't want large families anymore. This goes double for affluent, college-educated people. Women have more options outside of marriage and childrearing, and people want to have one or two kids and give them every advantage, rather than five or six and give them "just the basics" and hand-me-downs and no college.
- A lot of younger people would rather have a condo or small house in the city, with all the available amenities, rather than a house in the suburbs where you have to drive to everything. Same with older empty-nesters. Older folks who can't drive safely are less likely to be isolated shut-ins in places with good public transit.
- People are moving to where the jobs are, and the jobs are concentrating in a few urban areas (google "Pokemon Go Economy"). A lot of older suburbs, especially in the Northeast and Rust Belt, don't have much going on in the way of jobs.
24
Young people who are needed to create the next generation are interested in living in cities and not in suburban or rural areas. The areas highlighted in the graphic show this phenomenon is heavily skewed to the Appalachian Counties and those in America’s heartland, particularly the wide region from Texas to North Dakota.
One of the great surprises of New York City compared to the City thirty years ago? The number of babies and little children.
12
Biggest puzzle of this person’s career? Really...
1) people are dying from opioids everywhere but especially suburbia, check out WV
2) without jobs it’s hard to have kids
3) student loan debt crushes dreams of kids and buying houses and for most college degrees isn’t opening up careers
4) obesity and resultant diabetes and hypertension are rampant, especially compared to prior generations
It’s not that hard to explain, but is quite a bit harder to fix
47
Hunterdon has one of the best family medicine training programs in the country along with leadership by family physicians of the county's medical care system. It would be interesting to look at the cost of having a baby especially in this county over the years cited to see if that cost has increased there - heaven help us if it has - like it likely has across the county, especially I would hypothesize in the counties that have shown the most decrease in birth rate.
At a recent North Carolina Medical Society meeting, the new head of the NC DHHS compared the infant mortality rate in Bertie Co. to the mortality rate of Outer Mongolia - 24 per 1000 births. It would be wise to see if the infant mortality rate in a county correlates with its decline in birth rate. Bertie Co. NC is in the epicenter of the NE NC decline of birth rate of the graphs presented here. And NE NC highlighted in the graphs is one major epicenter for premature births that in turn correlate with infant mortality rate.
4
Let's be clear: we are not talking about a stabilizing population here, we're talking about a population in decline (more deaths than birth). This is not good any way you look at it. And I don't buy all those "but the Earth is full!" arguments; History shows that the population limit of our planet can be expanded significantly by science and technology, and the only limit is that of our imagination. Unfortunately, older people tend to imagine the past ("...make it great again!"), but what we really need is to imagine the future. Therefore the best way to improve our lot as a civilization is to have more youth, and to educate them well.
7
This sprawl development was a bad idea from the start and many of us tried to explain that and fought against it all over the country. It inflicted considerable damage to erect it (loss of wetlands, open space, wildlife habitat); it inflicted considerable damage to those who lived in it (grueling commutes, lost time with children spent commuting, increased racial and economic segregation); and yes it will inflict pain to have them wither away. But the old saw "don't through good money after bad" comes to mind if advocating that this trend should be fought. Lower birth rates are good for us in the long run even if there is a challenging demographic transition and if young people are sensible enough to not want to live in sprawl more power to them.
28
Not mentioned is the cost of housing, perhaps the major factor for young people in deciding where they can live. The folks who moved to the outer rings years ago wanted to live in lush private surroundings that were affordable for them when they moved there but became increasingly expensive over time. Now those folks, if they want to sell their properties at all, want big bucks for their huge houses on wooded lots. Or their descendants, having come into possession of the properties and only interested in liquidating the assets, have come to believe the inflated prices accurately reflect fair market price. The real estate marketing system supports this, of course, telling owners their houses are valuable — it’s self-serving to Realtors, title companies, attorneys, but it also psychologically reinforces the owners by reinforcing how well they’ve done in life.
It will take a long time for the owners of these properties to accept a lower price for their properties, making them affordable to younger people living on more modest means. Expect more residential properties sitting empty like the commercial Merck building until the owners accept market reality.
Yes, urban vitality is important to young people, and being able to get around without an auto is appealing, but the cost of housing remains the single most important factor for young people deciding where to live.
34
The Title of the article is very misleading. "Booming" is meant to indicate/suggest ECONOMIC growth. But the article literally is talking about POPULATION growth.
The two are definitely not the same.
There can be plenty of deaths in an area and that actually makes the economy boom. Hospitals, nursing homes, specialists, elder care etc. These are all the major employment areas in the retirement suburbs here in Western North Carolina (shown on map).
Guess what? Younger people, who although are in the minority and of course are NOT DYING, have those jobs, many white collar jobs (with plenty of construction of hospitals etc. too) in what would have been a much bleaker economic landscape had people not been relocating here in later years.
More and more people is not always the answer.
9
From a high enough altitude, more people is always the answer. The article is pointing to the areas which are soon enough going to have no answer because their population are leaving. The author did not indicate, but should have, that those red boxes also indicate near term risk of municipal defaults.
4
It seems that this population stabilization or decline is being taken as a problem. I don't agree. Our planet is finite. Our environment is being attacked. The single biggest reason for this is our sheer numbers. Controlling our numbers is a good thing. Of course, at the same time, we need to address issues that derive from this new reality. We need to adjust our way of doing things, but we don't need to keep increasing. I write this at 72 from our house in the woods in central Virginia - woods we are trying to protect by just letting them be. I am concerned about these woods more for future generations than for us. But, as our numbers increase, so does the inevitable pressure of the natural environment. It's simple math played out.
28
Those red boxes precisely do indicate the areas where people, for their own reasons, are effectively controlling numbers. Please don't suggest that government should use its coercive force to quickly reduce population.
3
World population continues to grow unabated. The rate of increase has been basically the same since ww2. At the current rate there will be 4 times as many people in 70 years.
5
I was not, am not, suggesting coercion, but informed and responsible decisions.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that my exurb was in the same position. Definitely our schools - overcrowded when my kids started - are now shrinking and fights are happening all over the district on which ones to close.
If we are not in decline, we are in stasis. The solid middle class is replaced with a much less solid influx of immigrants in the more urban regions of the county.
And our decline can be traced to one single event - the miniaturization of technology that replaced mainframes with PCs, PCs with tablets and tablets with phones. With the commodification and overlap of business and personal technology. IBM no longer had a demand for chip and mainframe capacity. The regions primary employer imploded. Not unlike Merck pulling out of Huntington.
What we are seeing is the de-industrialization of the nation. It started in small towns, spread to small cities and now has reached the outer burbs.
We are long past the canary in a coal mine stage. Why hasn't anyone notice the bird is dead?
38
This article explains reduced geographic mobility as a result of the recession. Historically, though, haven't Americans picked up stakes in bad times and moved in search of employment? Why haven't we seen streams of migrants from places like West Virginia moving to Houston to work on construction projects after the flooding? The connections between economics and migration seem pretty muddled these days to me.
20
Moving cross country or the next state over for another 8 to 10 dollar an hour job makes absolutely no sense. The costs of moving are insane today too. If one moves to a booming area you must prepare to pay more for the booming rents. May as well stay in Povertyville because at least you can afford to.
8
Why are these demographers surprised that young people aren't having children? GDP growth has not led to wage increases. I'm 38 and making less money than I did seven years ago when one adjusts for inflation. Plus, college costs and student loan debt keeps rising. Young people also do not have job security which is even more important than one's actual wage in trying to start a family. These wealthy professors really don't understand the real world even though they have data - but it's all theoretical.
111
This will obviously surprise you, but most professors aren’t “wealthy”. Many of us, after a minimum of 8 years of post-graduate schooling and 10 years in the business are: 1) still paying off our student loans; 2) not earning more than an average public school teacher; 3) have seen our wages flat line due to compression. The students I teach are less prepared and skilled than they were a decade ago. I’m not complaining though: I went into this field I wanted to be of-service to emergent youth and help them to figure out their path, passions, and goals. But it’s important to clarify the misnomer that academics earn 6-figures. Not even close.
62
Wage stagnation set against steadily increasing prices clearly induces a rational response among people of child-bearing age: stop reproducing. Comparison to what happened in the 1930s should be no surprise.
57
The author and the commenters seem to be equally sorry this is happening. In my view this is a good thing. A blessing. We keep hearing how robots and AI will replace 50% of the employees in the near future. Who needs more children, just to increase the number of unemployed? Also in the 21 century why live in a forest? Many miles from the civilization? It is not just wasteful, and harmful for the planet, it is also boring.
37
As the boomers retire in major numbers, these demographic shift's are all about where the Grand children live, high tax jurisdictions, and lousy weather. Techies want to live work and play in major cities.
10
Newsflash: it's the cost of childcare. People cannot afford to have children in the same way that they once did. Women now graduate from college with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans, and need to work to pay off the debt. Thus, they cannot stay at home to raise children, and need to rely on daycare, which is extremely expensive.
119
One big reason in my opinion for the downward population trend in exurban or semi rural outer rings is the lack of high speed internet. Young families simply will not live in areas that do not have state of the art fiber optic high speed service. The reason is that it is a real disadvantage. I live in Boston, but grew up in Western Massachusetts in Berkshire county in one of those small towns that still looks like a Norman Rockwell painting and still own a home there as well. These beautiful "Hilltown" communities have no access to fiber optic high speed internet, and for young families may as well be off the grid. I cannot speak for other places, but for Western Massachusetts the lack of dependable high speed internet is killing these communities. It is starving them to death of young people as they become senior citizen communes.
44
Ha. You know, that's funny - My father, on his bucolic thirty acre Hunterdon County estate, which he built after he retired, has DSL service, which comes in on a "twisted pair" wire that follows his mile-long driveway, and has, for thirty years, been constantly knocked down during storms. It can be annoying to visit him because of the lack of reliable internet (last time I had to "tether" to my phone to get some work done), and I could see how this sort of thing might prevent me from moving there at all if I were younger.
19
The lack of well-paying jobs in these areas may related to that, and I may also a factor. But the reason I'm able to live in my rural Maine community is the cable broadband that allows me to do IT work from home. What's a problem is having almost no cell outside of tiny downtown areas, and there's no reliable service on the roads until you get a couple hundred miles south. I have absolutely no signal in my house (except for the occasional random Canadian roaming connection), and wouldn't be able to make calls without a landline if it weren't for WiFi.
26
Exact same thing happening on Cape Cod, the largest open air retirement home in the east.
3
"Mr. Johnson said the natality data resembles that of another time in history, but without the obvious economic explanation: “The only other time we’ve been in a situation like this has been in the Great Depression itself.
The trends are are surprise only to Mr. Johnson and others cloistered with lifetime job security in academia. The same people that did not predict Brexit, Trump, the gains of right-wing candidates throughout Europe, etc.
Since the 1970's the growth in the economy has become decoupled from growth in middle-class wages in the US; almost all the gains went to the 1%, the lions share to the .1% and you can tell a similar story internationally a la Piketty.
That Johnson can't find an "obvious economic explanation" speaks volumes! But for the people living thru it, while it may not be as harsh as the Great Depression, it is still a time when the rules that held for the post-WW2 decades are gone. Twas a time when a young couple would buy a house and be eating macaroni because they had so little income left over, but within a few years their income grew with the economy and they felt prosperous. No more. And Gen X can see their parents lose a job in their 50's and be unable to ever find one with similar pay. It's a wonder only to people like Johnson that people in their child-bearing years are choosing smaller families and moving closer to where the .1% still provide jobs (hint: it's not in the burbs)
107
I hear what you're saying, but regarding academia - that's my field, and I can tell you that for the vast majority of academics, the idea of lifetime job security is a pipe dream. Those jobs are disappearing. Most academics today enter the job market with complete uncertainty as to what will be out there for them, and often take jobs with very little security (not tenure track), in which they work long hours for barely a middle class salary. So the idea of the naive academic is really outdated. We live in this world too, believe it or not.
6
Zoning is what you need to overlay on your map. Seniors are the majority in my town and they will be for thirty more years, until they die and pass the house down to a sixty year old offspring. That will continue until the area receives state money to expand the water supply, which in turn will allow denser housing.
While seniors are the majority, they will continue giving themselves tax exemptions to age in place. That means the schools will be perpetually starved, since NY makes the local community with no tax base responsible for a substantial amount of school taxes, making the local community a place where one would't want to be in denser housing anyway. Spiral down. No wonder new parents are gathering elsewhere.
23
You seem to be demeaning of senior citizens - hey, they paid their taxes for decades and decades funding public schools, city, state and federal taxes and beyond.
We don't need more biological kids (egotistical) ADOPT ORPHANS.
4
Working with and hiring millennials it has become clear that this generation laughs at the American Dream. For them I believe it has become somewhat of a nightmare. Many are left with enormous student debt some of which equals a rent payment. Many are in their 30's and not married. Almost none own homes and many I know have no children. To understand why they can't or won't move to the suburbs is completely understandable. What the suburbs must do if they are to survive is start to develop areas that will be suitable for millennials. Apartment type housing close to the city center that is affordable. This will be the starter home for the future home owners. If the suburbs don't change they will begin to slowly die as this generation turns their back on large expensive homes with ridiculous upkeep costs, long commutes, high taxes and less diverse neighborhoods. The suburbs must listen. The numbers don't lie.
90
Excellent perspective.
13
Yep. All of the millennials I know have dream-crushing levels of student debt. Forget about owning a home--an apartment without 5 roommates is an unattainable dream.
52
In addition, many homes in attractive or resort areas are being bought up as second, third, or more vacation homes by the wealthy, and often used as AirBNB or other vacation rentals when the owners aren't there. This further reduces the amount of affordable housing, and the claimed benefits of tourism doesn't make up for the inability of towns to provide housing for their teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other middle class or service workers. The newest trend in my Tahoe-area town has been the construction of massive "AirBNB" houses in residential areas that are earmarked solely for vacation rentals - six car garages, four to six master suites, two or three lots that formerly held normally sized houses now built edge-to-edge with these massive buildings in what were quiet neighborhoods with some second homes used primarily by snowbirds or family members. So far none have been built on our street, but I am dreading to see what happens next summer when these monoliths are open for business. Several towns are now looking into changing zoning ordinances to limit short-term rentals to areas that already have commercial housing. I am keeping my fingers crossed.
11
Some of the comments bemoan this terrible situation and some of the comments rejoice that a more sustainable population may result.
I wish the Times would write an article explaining what's bad about declining population and what's good about declining population and then tell us the real answer.
26
There is no real answer, they're both right. But short term the pain will be worse without immigrants and births occurring, because the young take care of the old in our system. Except with the huge tax cuts that's already undermined to a larger extent.
Trump et al never mention the degree to which we grow more than Europe only because of immigration, illegal and legal. Otherwise we'd be the same.
15
It's pretty annoying that you cannot stop the map from changing, so you can inspect it closely.
39
The outer suburbs do not need legal or illegal immigrants who drain the federal, state and local governments of benefits: welfare, food stamps, section 8 housing, education for their kids and the overcrowding of schools, free health care at the cost to American tax payers, as well as incarceration at the cost of American tax payers.
Just ask suburbs across the country that are financially drained because of illegals in their community.
16
@Olivia, But that would not be politically correct. Public schools are not legally allowed to ask if the children enrolling are US citizens or not.
5
Take in to consideration not only the aging of the populations in the suburban areas but the concomitant aging of all the infrastructure that supports the sprawl. Maintenance of all of it becomes an increasing untenable situation doesn't it? There may come a time when historians view what we consider normal, suburban sprawl, as an anomalous societal experiment, one which proved unsuccessful.
John~
American Net'Zen
23
The Strong Towns nonprofit/website has done excellent analysis and coverage on this issue. www.strongtowns.org
8
It would be wise to consolidate the underused school systems of wealthy suburban school districts with adjacent poor suburban school districts. That would be far wiser and cheaper than opening up charter schools in the poor school districts. Total costs including transportation would be less than what is spent now. The education provided to ALL the students, rich and poor, Black and White, would be better.
What's required are:
1 Political will, and
2 Wealthy White people willing to help less wealthy Black and Brown people.
This is not likely to happen quickly. Consolidation of New Jersey school districts, towns, and counties was first proposed in 1916. Progress has been slow.
14
Big Guy, would you send your kids to a school that is predominately black and brown? Why would any white or middle class parents of any color want to do so? Violence, racism against whites or minority kids who 'act' white because they want to learn, low performing students with absent parents being raised by grandparents, or parents who just don't value education. Would you want that for your kids?
I doubt it, so don't try to impose it on others.
24
I would send my kids to any school where the parents value education regardless of the race or the family situation of the kids there. Every American child also deserves a quality education regardless of how much money their parents happen to have and we have failed collectively in that duty.
6
Wow. That is some serious racist stereotyping. Where I come from immigrants do better in school, and they're not white.
12
“New Census Bureau projections say that Americans over 65 will outnumber children under 18 for the first time in U.S. history by 2030, and that “a rising number of deaths will increasingly offset how much births are able to contribute to population growth.”
Could someone please tell that to those experimenting with our social policy, I.e. immigration repression called nationalism.
Japan has learned this lesson. South Korea just learned it. China learned the lesson of populations inability to maintain its populations internally.
Immigration will be the only way to support our industry until most jobs are obsolete and the US population will be supported by the automatic economy of the new world order.
15
By the way: your rotating graphic would be FAR more informative and FAR less ANNOYING if it allowed reader control. To see what's happening in different states in 2016, for instance, you have to sit through MANY cycles of distracting, fleeting views of other years.
72
A brownstone in a regular Brooklyn neighborhood market value $2.5m taxes around 6-8k. One hour away in a nice part of Westchester suburb a normal house at $1.5-1.8m taxes are 50k plus. An hour away in Long Island an average price point for a house is $500-800k with taxes 20k plus. Additional costs include commuting costs, car costs, lawn care etc. Most people move out of the city because of schools but at those higher taxes one could almost justify paying private school tuition and just making different trade offs.
34
Those people paying $2.5M for a brownstone earn at least $350K and pay 4% or $15K for NYC resident taxes. The property taxes is usually a swap for resident tax. NYC has a resident tax because so many rent.
4
Suburban taxes in counties just outside of NYC come close to equaling private school tuition, but not quite. If you have more than one child, then you’ve certainly priced yourself out of the market.
You have to be a millionaire to raise children correctly in NYC. All others either move out or sentence their children to “my first institution” masquerading as a school.
6
Supply and demand should replenish these communities. If that is not happening then the American economy is not functioning appropriately. I believe this is probably the result of increasing inequality. The rich are getting wealthier and moving to more exclusive neighborhoods while lower and middle income households are stuck at the same level. Help people move up the ladder and we should be fine.
17
And the best part, all of this will be made much worse by robots and AI. Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie, but it's coming just the same.
I wish someone would have told me in 1991 to invest in daycare centers in Utah, Southern California and NYC and invest in funeral homes in Appalachia.
19
What’s not to understand, The American Dream is Dead! No more home in the suburbs, a car in every garage and mom staying home raising the kiddies. No as the jobs disappeared that created the middle class the millennials along with the rest of us have been convinced all they need is a phone and lots of apps to summon up a ride in someone elses jalopy and another to connect you to a sofa for the night or rent yours out to make ends meet in this brave new gig economy that has all the money landing in a very few laps. An excellent article on “ Zucktown” in today’s Times confirms the return of the necessary “ company town”, the stunning thing about this is these are supposedly the best and the brightest who are now dependent on the largesse of the Tech Gods, what a farce, worse yet Zucktown is built on what was an area that allowed affordable housing for many folks. We have officially come full circle from the dirty days before Unions entered the fray and secured a piece of the pie for workers back to the companies owning the world. The unions were killed, the jobs sent to Asia and Milton Friedmans voodoo economics delivered as promised to his disciples, all the money goes to the top. Greenspan’s observation materialized as well when he presciently uttered “we can’t give them raises but we can give them credit”. We now have a country owned by the one percent, welcome to the new American Dream, welcome to debtor nation!
83
These young people are making economically rational decisions in the world you helped create.
30
Sorry Joe, I was so not a part of what has been going on and against most of it that I can’t take any of the blame aside from being old
4
What happened in the upper Midwest in 2006? You see a gradual rolling wave of red, a reversal in 2006 and then the red gets back everywhere it reversed in 2011 with more growth in 2016. It is almost as if people moved away to die elsewhere. Once those people, maybe more mobile via wealth, left leaving a smaller base, the prior trend resumed.
3
Michael Blazin, One factor - when the financial downturn in 2006 or so occurred, many people lost the mobility to move to take better jobs or to warmer climates because almost overnight they were underwater on mortgages and couldn't afford to move.
8
One can only be grateful for this trend! When national states reach steady-state, non-growth economies, the populations with the highest living standards will be those with the highest resource to population ratios. And since the resources are declining, the population must decrease faster.
13
Well, that's a good thing, surely? There are way too many humans on the planet, and we need to reduce our numbers, and a reduced birth rate is the least painful way to make that happen.
32
I think there are several things in play here. First, Millenials are having much smaller families due to the costs involved (child care through college) and fewer "stay at home" moms. Second, while baby boomers aspired to larger homes in desirable towns/neighborhoods, Millenials (or at least the ones in my family) do not want the cost or effort of maintaining a large home either DIY or by hiring others to do the work - they would much rather bike, hike, explore and/or spend time with their families. Third, Millenials do not want the commute from an exurb because of the long hours many are putting in at work - adding in a 2hr+ round trip commute to a 10-12 hour work day holds absolutely no interest to them.
The reality is that Millenials have learned from the mistakes of their Baby Boomer parents.
162
There are a lot of Millenials in my suburban area because they cannot afford to live in the city.
15
The city you live near is San Francisco, with some of the most expensive housing on the planet. Most U.S. cities have a different cost dynamic relative to their suburbs.
5
These sorts of flippant responses do not consider the possibility that jobs can actually migrate to where the population wants to live. This is happening in parts of the country outside the expensive corridors.
Why is it only the employee has to make the adjustments? Companies move their production all over the planet. Why not move the back office operations to somewhere where their own costs are lower?
1
The only things certain in life are birth and death. (not taxes, rich people don't pay taxes or at least not their fair share).
You cannot predict anything else including demographic changes.
I once read a prediction from the Bklyn Eagle newspaper archives circa 1900 on what would happen in the 20th Century.
The majority of their predictions were wrong but the one I loved the most was that the brown and black races would eventually disappear from earth.
15
The top half of taxpayers pay 97.2% of all federal taxes.
10
Thank you for your reply Moira but I was talking about the super rich, those earning in the top 1-5% like Warren Buffet who admits he has a lower tax rate than his sec.
What percent of the total income did they have?
Immigrants - legal or illegal - have ZERO to do with the population of my county at any time.
This is NOT a "suburban" county but a vacation-destination-second home kind of place.
Quite simply immigrants (legal or illegal) can NOT afford to live here. (No rentals - not apartments, not houses & median priced house is nearly $500K)
I looked at the demographics back in 2010. Between 2000 & 2010, this county lost over 30% of its population who would be between 18 -40.
The reason they left? Only low-paying tourism jobs and they could not afford to live indoors. After awhile, couch-surfing or stuffing 8 people into a 4 bedroom house (that the owner inherited but can't afford on their own) gets old & they can not have kids.
And those who can afford the county are typically over-45, either own a small business or are early-retirees (who bought around 2000 in the anticipation of retirement) and they are not having kids at their age
Bottom line is that the ones who left ended up leaving because they can not afford this place.
45
Hunterdon County is not a vacation home kind of place—it is still quite rural with dairy farms and beautiful country roads
3
This is good news, because there are too many people for our country -- or the world -- to sustainably support. I interviewed the late great Isaac Asimov years ago, and he said he believed the optimum population for the US was about 100 million. We have more than three times that number. The academic who wrote this article doesn't get it -- it's about our natural environment. We're destroying it with our consumption patterns, and that is a consequence of population growth.
35
complete nonsense. The US economy is the largest because its population is larger than all other industrialised countries. Japan has a population of around 100 Million and its economic growth came to a halt long ago. China 's economy has grown to its current size because it has a large population. The US exports a big proportion of the food grains it grows. To say that the US food production cannot sustain more than 100 million people is completely wrong. Sorry the "late great Isaac Asimov" was not correct.
17
There is more to decent life than enough grain to eat and a few square feet to squat on. There are too many people. Too many rich people (that's us!) with a huge carbon footprint, and too many people living in squalor without sewer ditches around their shacks. In between is a small number that probably is right.
Malthus, meet Adam Smith.
Given the current paradigm, an economy has to grow to remain healthy. However the natural world itself places limits on growth, and we're getting close if we're not already there. One or the other has to give way.
The economists say "bring in immigrants", but the environmentalists should be saying "learn how to live comfortably with a shrinking population". Otherwise you're just encouraging the marginalization of the populations who choose to reduce their growth, and the dominance of those who don't.
62
A data question: how, specifically, are locations of births and deaths specified? We live in Kent County, Maryland, which blinks red on the map in 2016. In the preceding decade the local hospital closed its ob/gyn department, and more agressively transported its most acute patients 40 miles south, from Kent to Talbot County. If births and deaths are recorded at the hospital location the data will appear quite different from the lived reality. If they are recorded at the actual homes of either the new infant or the newly-deceased, the resulting data will be socially meaningful.
19
Buying a house in Hunterdon is out of the reach of most young families. In the past, it was upper middle class, now it's only for the wealthy. The rising cost of buying a home is at least part of the reason these neighborhoods are declining.
57
Buying a house in Hunterdon may be out of the reach of most young families, but there are still plenty of very nice suburbs that young families can afford and where they will get much more for their money than in NYC.
4
Not quite sure why declining birth rates are a bad thing -- anywhere. There are 7.6 billion people on this earth, which has a sustainable carrying capacity of possibly 2 billion (living at a European standard of consumption).
Generally, populations decline when 1. women are empowered to make their own birth control decisions, which includes a living wage, and 2. when the immediate future for families seems grim. We have both situations right now.
80
Is it not a bad thing that the immediate future for families seems grim in this country?
6
The grim reality unfortunately doesn’t seem to support that theory in Texas, Arizona and California all areas with large immigrant populations.
4
The last map appears to be more rural than even remotely suburban. The author is stretching the definition. That wide swath of red in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia is lots and lots of country. Given the birth/death demographics, poverty AND the ever worsening opioid epidemic, the ratios sadly come as no surprise.
15
The biggest problems arise with public sector pensions and municipal debt associated. Humans are reproducing less by choice.
7
THe article only talks about the birth/death ratio. One seemingly obvious reason for the birth rate slow down the exurban areas has been the housing market. 20-30 years ago young couples moved out the the suburbs and then starterd having children. Now they have their first kid and then move before the child/children are ready for school.
15
If population reduction is a bad thing, and I'm not convinced it is, then why shouldn't we be encouraging educated middle class American citizens to have children.
Immigration is not the solution to low fertility rates of middle class Americans. We need to raise wages and reduce the cost of housing. Deporting the 11 to 20 million illegals in the United States would do both. Reducing legal immigration would help also.
It is amazing to hear people say we squeezed responsible Americans until they gave up having children and we'll solve the "Problem" of low birth rates by bringing in a replacement population.
38
Michael Green:
Immigration is not the only driver of lower wages. Outsourcing, automation, and competition with international labor and production markets are the main issues with wage depression.
The recent 1+ trillion $ tax cut will make these trends worse, because the middle class: teachers, social workers, firefighters, police and public safety, care workers, etc. will all face a tremendous wage squeeze as a result, because the .01% got their money, and refuse to pay for the civilization they are benefiting from.
72
Just because immigration is not the only driver of low wages doesn't mean it shouldn't be reduced. Immigration should be reduced, a tax code which fairly taxes the rich, they pay very little taxes today, trade regulation are all legitimate issues. I was just saying, if Americans aren't having enough babies, we should be finding ways to help middle class families to afford children, no replacing them with immigrants.
3
Fascinating. Upshot pieces like this are just one of the many reasons the Times is indispensable. Thank you.
35
Jeanne, I agree. And with an article like this, I learn almost as much from the readers' comments - very helpful and insightful on both counts.
3
Wow, maybe I'll move to Hunterdon County! Has anyone done a study on suburbs like Montclair, NJ, where rich white New Yorkers are moving in and breeding like rabbits? This town looks like Logan's Run meets the Stepford Wives. Everyone is young, mostly white, and they are ALL PUSHING BABY CARRIAGES. Even the gay people are all married, and lots of them have kids. I had a nightmare where they passed a law that forced everyone to be married. My once diverse town has turned into a scary sci-fi film. Single people and old people are being marginalized and driven out. It's creepy.
59
The nightmare you had was made into a movie called The Lobster. It's really good (and weird).
13
White New Yorkers have been moving to Montclair for decades -- I think it's considered one of the better alternatives in NJ for people who really don't want to leave city life.
Am happy to hear they are taking their baby carriages with them -- I am tired of tripping over them (and all the attched yoga mats, grocery bags, etc.) here in the city. One thing I have never understood about some of these families is why, if they can afford to live in Manhattan and have children in Manhattan, they can't afford to hire a babysitter to watch the kid(s) while they go shopping. Single people and, especially, old people are also being marginalized and driven out of NYC, so you're not alone.
13
Ellie, my mom always took us kids with her to the store. Coming from a degenerate family as I do, I do the same. To my shame. I never realized the proper thing to do was to stash children in a soundproofed closet until they reached 18. Anyway, so sorry that when you venture into public places you must encounter babies and children. It must be awful for you, and I really hope you are getting the help you need to heal and move on.
11
“It is one of the biggest puzzles of my career as a demographer,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociologist.
I'm not sure why this is so puzzling. Maybe if he spoke to young people, he would get the answer. Birth control is cheap and accessible for just about everyone. Student loans and housing costs are at an all time high. People have to work and/or commute ever longer hours. By the time you've dug yourself out of the financial hole and created some stability you're at the end of your 30s, which is very close to the end of your fertility (for women). If you're lucky, you might get one kid. More likely, you get a pet and call it a day, because even if you do have a kid, what world are you bringing them into? Mass shooting, environmental decline, a lifetime of debt? Until we put people first, and Capital last, the trend of declining birth will only accelerate.
244
My home state is nearly covered in red by 2016. Wow!
Me and my family had to get out, also, when the water was poisoned in our town of Charleston.
Now a coal baron is running for U.S. Senate. He was convicted of criminal wrongdoing related to the death of 29 coal miners and recently released from prison. And now he's popular in West Virginia. I'm glad I'm out of there, but I do miss those mountains.
53
The world is going to have to learn to live with the effects of negative population growth if humans are to survive as a civilized species. Immigration is not a sustainable solution, as it just borrows time by importing people from places with excessive population growth. At some point, we really have to turn it around and create sustainable societies with decreasing populations.
What happens to an economy when there are fewer workers and more retirees, and how do you keep it stable? Simple fiscal solutions will not be enough; we need to learn how to implement demographic-based solutions that keep an economy running under these conditions. Our entire economic paradigm requires constant growth; we need to design something different to deal with negative population growth without crashing the economy.
94
This has been a thought that has been in the back of my mind for some time now.
There is no economic model that deals with the inevitability of the population having to either flatten or decrease over the next 50 years if the Earth's ability to support that population is to be sustained.
A system where the gains from technological advancement and improving productivity are concentrated will never lead to a model that does not result in catastrophic economic and political events. It is already happening. Most people do not follow what goes on overseas but the wave has already started. The recent political upheavals are not just accidents or just part of some "cycle".
1
Perhaps part of the phenomenon is associated with the expense of having and raising children in a society that doesn't really support having and raising children.
234
Well you shoud consider moving to New YOrk City if you want support raising children -- all sorts of programs for them, incuding culturual enrichment and practically unlimited care for kids with disabilities and/or learning disabilities. Property taxes on single family homes in outer boroughs are very low by suburban standards. Can drive all over the place and aren't forced to take public transit. If you qualify for it, Medicaid in New York state is very comprehensive and includes all sorts of extra benefits not available in other states, including dental for both children and adults.
5
Or you can look at the population and income statistics for the DFW area.
Everything has basically DOUBLED in the past two decades. The population is NOT aging. The population is GROWING. And incomes are RISING.
The reality is that what the NYT considers "exurban" are often really places that are basically verging on rural. That pattern is easy to spot and is not news.
What has happened in the more expensive parts of the country is that the costs associated with raising a family has just become unreasonable. So people leave. The birth rate in the U.S. has been declining for a generation and that is not news either.
This analysis misses a few points. First of all, there is no mention of new home construction. An outer ring suburb will grow rapidly as farmland is converted to residential housing. But once it is fully developed, growth will stop.
Second, there is no mention of turnover in these developed suburbs. I live in an older, fully developed suburb of Columbus. When I moved here I had two kids. Now I'm an empty nester. Down the street a young family moved in with 4 children. Neither my kids moving out nor the new children moving in would have been counted in the birth/death calculation, but that's what eventually happens in all communities.
The real issue is the fewer number of births nationwide, but this may not be a bad thing. If we are to survive as a species, worldwide population must stop growing and stabilize at some level. That level may be higher than it is now, but it's not infinite.
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But it is stabilizing now.
It is an inconvenient fact that capitalism depends on an ever growing population to drive real asset prices ever higher and to spur household creation in order to create customers to buy all the stuff and use all the services whose production keeps everyone employed.
But at some point population growth has to crash up against its Malthusian limits, as it has clearly already done in Central America, Africa, and most of the Islamic world.
The Green Revolution postponed the inevitable, but it also raised the stakes, as does migration, remittances, and anything else that allows populations to continue growing.
The one hope for the world is that women in more and more places are gaining educations, taking on professions, and limiting their reproductive 'success.'
Shrinking populations in Japan, Russia, most of Western Europe, and parts of exurban New Jersey might look like problems for those with real estate to sell or rent. But the surest way to lower our collective carbon footprint, defuse regional conflicts, and eliminate poverty would be to reduce the number of us.
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Two post scripts:
The "Father of the Green Revolution", Norman Borlaug, always stated that this revolution was only a stopgap measure until the earth's population would decline and stabilize.
The second factor on which economic growth depended since the industrial revolution was the "essentially free" non-renewable resources lying concentrated at our feet in the earths upper crust.
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In other words, capitalism is a Ponzi scheme.
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"It is an inconvenient fact that capitalism depends on an ever growing population "
not at all. Had middle class incomes kept rising with the growth in the economy the average person would be almost 2x better off reflecting the doubling of GDP since the 1970's. Instead, as Piketty and others have shown, almost all the growth both in the US and abroad has gone to the 1% and even there it is concentrated in the hands of the .1%
The economy has done just fine; its almost all the people living in it that have not
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In the long term, this trend is a good thing: there is unsustainably high population, and a gradual decline will have ecological benefits for all. In the near term, there will clearly be sociological problems to be addressed. It would be utterly foolish to try and increase birth rates, however.
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I hope that population declines will translate into ecological benefits. Even with very low birth rates, human's rapacious consumption patterns are driving eco disasters. Everyone wants large houses, heating and a/c, large cars, meat and fish heavy diets, new electronics each year, etc. The earth is being torn up for these greedy patterns.
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If you want to increase birth rates on a voluntary basis, ie to maintain a city or group of people that's ok.
If you do it on a penalty type or mandatory way that is not ok.
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