Depopulation arrives just in time
Has everyone forgotten about the Singularity?
Recently I received a reasonable critique of America’s New Map from a business exec who said I should have addressed the upside of world population peaking later this century (think 2075). The same might apply to the Census Bureau’s latest estimate that US population will begin to decrease before the end of the century.
First, let’s just talk about the US, where immigration is our sole option to avoid rapid aging, in large part because Whites are in absolute decline across the US — a reality that frankly drives a lot of none-too-subtle fear among that group as it watches its share of the total population drop rapidly toward less than 50% well before mid-century. As I have written time and again, I view that unprecedented racial transformation to be the primary motivational driver of White Christian Nationalism and the alt Right, whether they care to admit it or not. To me, the culture wars propagated by both elements are just proxy conflicts with the wider “threat” of “others” who do not conform to White male Christian rule.
What the Census Bureau projections demonstrate is that the US lives and dies with immigration going forward, as our ability to generate “natural increase” is fading with modernity — just like it is all over the world. So this is not a US cultural issue as many on the Right would like to portray it. It is a reality of economic development.
From the WAPO piece on the Bureau report:
“These projections make clear that immigration is absolutely essential to the nation’s future population growth,” said William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the data. “It is also necessary to counter the extreme aging we will otherwise experience with the youthfulness of immigrants and their children.”
As we note in America’s New Map, immigrants prop up our working-age population nicely, providing us a sort of ongoing, artificial demographic dividend.
Per the cool graphic above, immigrants sort of stiffen our demographic “spine.”
So, per the Census Bureau, our future population scenarios are driven solely by immigration:
The bureau’s projections include four possible scenarios of population change by 2100, based on high, medium, low and zero immigration to the United States.
In the most likely scenario, the population is projected to reach 366 million by 2100. The projection for the high-immigration scenario puts it at 435 million; the low-immigration scenario puts it at 319 million by the end of the century.
Let me note that, until recently, the standard US population projection for 2050 was in the range of 400 million. Thus, the most likely scenario now (366m) is quite a comedown.
For all of those experts chortling with glee about China’s projected population drop this century, this should be disturbing. And as for the hard-core anti-immigration crowd, they should realize that their dream scenario would leave us smaller at century’s end than we are presently (339m down 20m). That unlikely-but-dangerous scenario would see our social aging skyrocket.
What is baked into our future is diversity:
“All the growth in the nation’s population will be attributable to persons who identify with other race and ethnic groups, including multiracial persons,” Frey said. “This is especially the case among the younger generations. Even under the zero-immigration scenario, the nation will become more racially and ethnically diverse.”
What we’ve got here … is failure to procreate.
Sorry … my bad … couldn’t resist.
So, immigration is key to our avoiding extreme aging and every negative social and economic reality that goes with that, per America’s New Map:
There are profound moral consequences of demographic aging. Elders need help more than they need things, so older societies naturally shift from manufacturing toward services. If you want “American made,” then keep America as young as possible. The same holds true for “American owned,” as an aged society naturally cedes ownership of assets to younger, faster-growing economies. Ditto for preserving civic organizations and the social capital they impart, because their decline tracks with that of family size. Then factor in declining innovation, because older societies invest less in research, dampening entrepreneurial spirit—not good during an era of technological revolutions, many of which humanity will need to mitigate climate change’s ravaging effects.
As US demographers Richard Jackson and Neil Howe have noted, aged societies favor “consumption over investment, the past over the future, and the old over the young.” History shows that diminishing demographic strength leads to lower economic growth and a risk-averse society where an elder-dominated electorate resists emerging priorities for public spending. There is a reason Fox News’s audience skews so elderly and so many of our political leaders are twice as old (mid-seventies) as our nation’s median age (thirty-eight). Fortune favors the bold—not the old.
Now, as for the world, remember that we’ll spend most of this century processing huge demographic dividends (youth bulges segueing into working-age cohorts) across SE Asia (now), India (coming fast), and the Middle East and Africa (the BIG one at roughly one billion). All in all, we’re looking at figuring out how to globally employ a solid youth bulge approaching two billion souls.
So yeah, if the US and the North in general face rapid aging and depopulation, that’s not bad if you factor in that oversupply of labor still there and emerging across the Global South. It does mean that, in economic terms (trade and investment), we need to be focusing on the Global South and managing a sensible immigration flow northward.
Do we have a choice?
As the Census Bureau makes clear, the choice is between (1) accepting high rates of immigration or (2) rapidly aging and thus declining precipitously as a great power (like watching Japan today).
But as I argue in my book, then there’s the reality that climate change will be hitting the Global South disproportionally, so there is a huge emigration “push” unfolding there. That is a second profound reason why the North needs to economically integrate the South: keeping as much of the population there resiliently in place so that the northward flow does not balloon beyond all capability for absorption.
So, add it all up and it’s pretty compelling:
We in the North need immigration, lest we turn into giant retirement communities.
Those in the South face huge pressures for emigration (youth bulge, climate change).
In combination, that compels North-South economic integration (and that’s not even including the argument that firms across the North want to cash in on the ascendant global majority middle class’s consumption, based as it will be largely across the South).
But here’s the good news everyone is forgetting about this — admittedly — daunting transition (especially the racial mixing part that freaks out so many Whites today): the topping out of human population growth both makes it easier to mitigate climate change long term and — quite frankly — arrives just in time to prevent an unsustainable population growth through the application of dramatic life-extending biotech advances (the Singularity).
By the second half of this century, people will have the opportunity to apply tremendous technologies toward the goal of radical life extension. In fact, the question of access to those technologies will likely define politics in those distant decades.
So, this fear mongering about humans disappearing (along with becomes slaves to our robot masters) is misplaced. In macro terms, this whole population package is working out rather nicely in terms of timing.
Having said that, please procreate without fear. My spouse and I had three the old-fashioned way and adopted three from overseas. Those six are the joy of my existence.