The Population Forecasts Are Grim. They’re Still Too Optimistic.

More on demographics:

…There are two major pieces of wishful thinking in the flights of fancy that underpin American population forecasts. The first is immigration. The Census Bureau assumes the United States will have an annual net migration (immigrants minus emigrants) of about one million immigrants through the end of the century. The United Nations and Social Security trustees assume about 1.2 million immigrants a year throughout the 21st century. None of these forecasts are plausible. Net migration under President Trump will most likely turn out to be near zero, and he won’t be the last immigration restrictionist in our nation’s highest office.

Moreover, birthrates are collapsing across the entire planet, not just here at home. The supply of would-be migrants will shrink as more countries run out of young people, and the skilled ones every aging country covets will be fought over. With most countries staring down the same cliff, and with emigration from the United States rising, permanent high net migration is more of an aspiration than a forecast.

But the second act of wishful thinking has an even bigger effect. Many forecasters are assuming that current low fertility rates are temporary, that women are merely delaying having children rather than forgoing it entirely. But this isn’t true: Research shows that delays in childbearing are usually not made up, and, anyway, estimates that take deferred childbearing into account have fallen by just as much as the headline fertility rate.

Up until quite recently, the Social Security trustees’ main scenario assumed that fertility rates will rise from now until 2050, and stabilize at 1.9 children per woman. In 2023, the Census Bureau predicted that fertility rates will only gradually decline from 1.64 to 1.58 by 2075. Spoiler: Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already shown a 1.57 fertility rate for 2025. The U.N. expects that the U.S. fertility rate will be flat at about 1.65 through the entire 21st century. To its credit, Social Security trustees released new numbers just last month that revised their expectations down to 1.75 in 2050, but that is overly optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office is more realistic, but even it predicts that fertility will decline to 1.53, then stabilize….

 Lyman Stone is the director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies and the director of research for the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence.

Source: The Population Forecasts Are Grim. They’re Still Too Optimistic.