Thirteen immigrants officially become new U.S. citizens in a special naturalization ceremony on Flag Day at the historic Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. – Philadelphia, PA / USA – June 14, 2019 (Shutterstock)
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The results of the 2020 census are a warning sign that America is on a course for slow population growth.
Economists broadly agree that population growth fuels economic growth in wealthy countries. But the recently released census figures show the US population was 331.5 million people, an increase of just 7.4 percent between 2010 and 2020 — the lowest rate since the 1930s. Projections suggest that, unless current trends change, those numbers could continue to diminish dramatically over the next two to three decades, with the population growing by just 78 million by 2060.
Some parts of the US are already beginning to experience some of the downsides of population slowdown or decline: Shrinking tax bases in rural areas have made it harder for government budgets to support essential services, such as infrastructure and public schools. As population growth slows, the pressure for cuts will likely grow. Meanwhile, the existing population will continue to age; by 2030, the Census Bureau estimates that one in five US residents will be of retirement age.
“Slow population growth, at least in the United States and a lot of other developed countries, will become a dire age dependency problem,” William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution’s metropolitan policy program, said. “It puts a big strain on the rest of the population.”
There are ways that policymakers can turn the situation around — the Biden administration has advocated for family-friendly policies that could make it easier for Americans to have more children. But that will not be enough to overcome a widening gap in the number of working-age adults that are able to support an aging population of baby boomers.
That leaves immigration, which has historically insulated the US from population decline and represents a kind of tap that the US can turn on and off. Over the next decade, it is set to become the primary driver of population growth for the first time in US history. The question now is exactly how much more immigration might be needed to accelerate population growth — and whether US policymakers can actually overcome their political differences on the issue to make it an effective tool.
“Immigration is one of the most feasible and rational ways to help respond to this challenge and we know that it will have a really significant impact,” Danilo Zak, a senior policy and advocacy associate for the National Immigration Forum, said.
Immigration is the easiest way to increase population growth
There are two main ways that the US could increase overall population growth: by encouraging people to have more children or by increasing immigration levels.
On their own, pro-natalist policies have historically failed to increase birthrates in the kinds of numbers that would be required to stave off stagnant population growth. Internationally, research has shown that child allowances have led to slight, short-lived bumps in birthrates. From 2007 to 2010, Spain had a child allowance that led to a temporary 3 percent increase in birthrates, but that was mostly because more people decided to have children earlier, rather than have more of them. After the allowance was revoked, the birthrate decreased 6 percent.
President Biden has proposed his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, which would cap child care payments for parents earning up to 1.5 times the median income in their state, guarantee 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and maintain a new enhanced child tax credit for another four years — the kind of policies that might make it easier for families to have children. But even so, the US isn’t likely to see the kind of baby boom of the 1950s and ’60s, when the population was overall very young and a high percentage of women were in their childbearing years.
“Pro-family policies are important, but it’s proven pretty hard to get people to have more children when they don’t want to,” Zak said.
Immigration is a much more reliable driver of population growth. The average age of newly arriving immigrants is 31, which is more than seven years younger than the median American, meaning that they could help replace an aging workforce. They are also more entrepreneurial, which encourages economic dynamism, and more likely to work in essential industries, such as health care, transportation, construction, agriculture, and food processing.
Immigrants may also help stave off regional population declines. Immigrants are more likely to settle in areas where foreign-born populations already live, which are typically large metro areas that have lost population in recent years. Frey found in a 2019 report that, of the 91 large metro areas that gained population since the beginning of the decade, 15 would have actually lost population were it not for immigration, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. In another 11 large metro areas, immigration accounted for more than half of their population growth.
Refugees are also more likely to settle in less dense population centers where housing costs are lower, possibly reinvigorating the nearly 35 percent of rural counties in the US that have experienced significant population loss in recent decades.
Raising immigration levels wouldn’t necessarily require a major reimagining of the US immigration system, though that might offer more flexibility to reevaluate immigration levels periodically — it could be accomplished by just increasing the caps on existing forms of visas and green cards.
“Legal immigration is not something that’s been discussed very much,” Frey said. “I hope … these census numbers will force people to think about being more serious about that.”
To really reap the benefits of increased immigration, though, the US would have to ensure that immigrants have the ability to integrate, which it has done successfully in the past. Immigrants in the US already have a higher employment rate and labor participation rate than native-born citizens, and immigrant children tend to perform at or above the educational level of comparable US-born children.
In recent years, states and cities have adopted a patchwork of policies to promote immigrant integration, including programs designed to provide English classes, schooling, and professional training; resources to start businesses; and access to citizenship. But Biden has reestablished an Obama-era Task Force on New Americans to expand the role of the federal government in such initiatives.