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Page added on June 2, 2016
On economic growth and the decline in US births
From the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. births declined and the death rate rose last year in a sign of continuing pressure on the country’s population growth, newly released federal figures show. Preliminary numbers out Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show there were 3.98 million births in the U.S. in 2015. That is down 0.3% from 2014 and reverses a one-year rebound when the number of births rose slightly…. What is expected to worry some demographers is that the total number of U.S. births was lower than they projected, affirming concerns the country is struggling to recover from a childbearing slowdown sparked by the start of the recession in 2007.
The birth figures follow another set of preliminary data released this week showing the U.S. death rate rose for the first time since 2005…. A main factor was the death rate for heart disease increased slightly after declining each year since 1993. A rise in deaths from stroke and Alzheimer’s disease also contributed to the increase. Data for deaths from drug overdoses and suicide weren’t complete for the year, though early figures showed those climbed as well. “We’re in a period where population growth has been a bit slower,” said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center. “To keep the labor force growing, we’re going to need to have pretty healthy levels of immigration.”
Slowing labor force growth is a big reason why economists think the US will grow more slowly in the future than it has since World War Two. As the Obama economist team wrote back in 2013: “In the 21st Century, real GDP growth in the United States is likely to be permanently slower than it was in earlier eras because of a slowdown in labor force growth initially due to the retirement of the post-World War II baby boom generation, and later due to a decline in the growth of the working age population.”
And here is McKinsey: “In the 1970s, the United States could rely on a growing labor force to generate roughly 80 cents of every $1 gain in GDP. During the coming decade, assuming no dramatic increase in hours worked, that ratio will roughly invert: labor force gains will contribute less than 30 cents to each additional dollar of economic growth.”
Faster labor force growth — say, half the postwar average — might require higher birthrates, more immigration, and more Americans both in the workforce and staying in the workforce a bit longer. Here is the late Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker on the value of a younger, growing population in an advanced economy like America’s:
In richer countries, retirement incomes and medical care of the elderly are largely financed by taxes on the younger working population. Low birth rates eventually lead to fewer men and women of working ages, and hence a smaller tax base to finance social security payments, unless the fewer children born have sufficiently greater amounts invested in their education and other human capital.
Although potential difficulties in financing social security benefits are receiving the most attention, other negative effects of low birth rates may be of equal or greater importance. Low fertility reduces the rate of scientific and other innovations since innovations mainly come from younger individuals. Younger individuals are also generally more adaptable, which is why new industries, like high tech startups, generally attract younger workers who are not yet committed to older and declining industries.
The great majority of countries have had growing populations during the past 250 years as world population grew at unprecedented rates. Yet ever since Malthus wrote his great work on the harmful effects of population growth on incomes, group after group have opposed high fertility and growing populations as bad for the world’s food supply, standard of living, and environment, including local and global pollution.
However, these possible negative effects of larger populations have to be weighed against the sizable benefits from more people. These benefits include a larger number of young persons who, as mentioned earlier, are more likely to innovate, such as coming up with more efficient ways to grow food, and pay for the benefits to retired men and women. A bigger population also increases the demand for new drugs, software, social networking, and other innovations that have increasing returns to the scale of demand.
22 Comments on "On economic growth and the decline in US births"
makati1 on Thu, 2nd Jun 2016 7:24 pm
Nothing new here. No growth is good.
Davy on Thu, 2nd Jun 2016 7:35 pm
Delusional population talk from a previous century. Every new mouth we add is one more nail in all of our coffins. How we get those fewer mouths will have to include increased deaths and less births. There is no other way. Economies will feel the stress from more deaths but the difference is the stress from more mouths is so much greater because those more mouths will eventually mean many more less mouths need to die. This is a catch 22 situation but one that has only one solution and that is a mass die off hopefully over a lifetime but these type of processes don’t work that way. There will be bulges and jagged movements. Death is never clean.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Thu, 2nd Jun 2016 9:05 pm
“A mass die off hopefully over a lifetime”
@Davy- do you even read what you write before you hit submit comment? Perhaps you could tell me how a mass die off might occur in any other way than “over a lifetime”. Fucking retard. Did you even finish high school?
Sissyfuss on Thu, 2nd Jun 2016 11:07 pm
Jeff Passel says,”To keep the labor force growing, we need healthy levels of immigration”. Oh hell yes, Jeffrey, we got that one covered. But what about easy to extract resources, living wages, and a stable climate? Oops, we got to do some serious recalculations.
theedrich on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 1:34 am
Davy, THALB seems to have a limited vocabulary consisting largely of worlds such as “retard,” “f-ing” and similar niceties. Perhaps she should return to first grade and learn a few words outside of the guttur. Some small increase in reasoning ability would help a bit, too.
The WSJ article is little more than a rehash of the “more-warm-bodies-means-a-growing-BAU” (i.e., quantity = quality) drivel that politicians and economists love. No mention of the fact that technology is increasingly displacing non-elite workers or that population overload is crushing earth’s life-support system.
The oligarch-controlled media like to pretend that all inflooding ThirdWorlders have IQs of 150 and “are more likely to innovate, such as coming up with more efficient ways to grow food, and pay for the benefits to retired men and women.” This is a lie, and the oligarchs (with whose traditional enmity we are quite familiar) know it. The reality is that the inflooding coloreds will turn Whiteland into one-party replicas of the failed sewers whence they come. That, obviously, is what the Demonic Party wants.
Anonymous on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 1:51 am
Quite right theed. Pro-natalists, and mass-immigration advocates always make the claim the turd world immigrants are either, ‘enriching us’ (how is never really spelled out), or are all better edumacated than all us oafish pseudo-americants. Well, the first claim is patently false, and the second one, well, whose fault is the collapsing education systems in North America again?
The other quaint idea this idiot trots out is the more population = more potential geniuses trope. What would we use all those unborn einsteins for? Why to help solve the all the problems created by the actions and systems created by the previous generation of geniuses. Funny thing is, that never happens either. Humanity made great strides in ‘innovation'(however defined), when the population was far lower than it is currently. The idea that more people=more ‘smart’ people rest on a pretty flimsy base. I think the base they rest it on is a stack of bibles…
Never stops pro-birth creationists from making these claims over and over of course…
derhundistlos on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 2:58 am
The source of this garbage is the R. Murdoch US rag of record aka WSJ, which explains everything.I remember reading Murdoch’s approach to business, “Tell them what they want to hear on the way in, and kick ’em in the balls on the way out.”
Is this asshole still alive?
Boat on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 4:00 am
The US doesn’t need a growing economy, just a much more efficient one. We need a shrinking population.
A worker with skills will earn more if there is always a worker shortage. As mentioned, tech gains will supply the work force of the future. It should not be immigration.
A flat tax alone would free up millions of workers that push paper needlessly. End the war on drugs and we gain all the workers and billions. Our economy has a lot of false job creation born of fear. I call it inefficiency.
makati1 on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 6:08 am
“A worker with skills will earn more if there is always a worker shortage.” Not if that worker’s job is not needed anymore because there is no buyer for the product he makes. Why do you think business are closing? Lack of customers and profit.
As long as there are workers somewhere in the world that are willing to work for $1 per hour, jobs are NOT coming back to the Us. Ever. Adjust.
GregT on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 8:36 am
“The US doesn’t need a growing economy, just a much more efficient one.”
Right Boat. Again, you display a complete lack of understanding as to how your monetary and financial systems work. In order for your vision to a viable option, the current system would need to be completely collapsed and rebuilt from the bottom up. At the root of the problem lies the USD itself. A fiat currency, backed by nothing, printed out of thin air, with interest attached. The very nature of which requires a certain rate of exponential growth, or it becomes a debt trap and implodes in on itself. Exactly what it is already well into the process of doing.
Boat on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 9:09 am
greggiet,
No money has ever been backed by anything but faith. To few workers is a healthier economic environment. Society will choose where the workers provide the most value. We have to much infrastructure to support with to small a wage. We need higher wages with shrinking infrastructure.
The US has advantages. We invent shyt. We make current shyt more efficient. We adapt to change better than most. Shrink to compete is the new slogan. You heard it here first.
Kenz300 on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 9:24 am
Too many people……….create too much pollution and demand too many resources….
China made great progress in moving its people out of poverty…….one reason was slowing population growth…..
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
CLIMATE CHANGE, declining fish stocks, droughts, floods, air water and land pollution, poverty, water and food shortages all stem from the worlds worst environmental problem……. OVER POPULATION.
Yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy and water for every year… this is unsustainable… and is a big part of the Climate Change problem
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
Kenz300 on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 9:24 am
Too many people demand too many resources……yet the worlds population grows by 80 million every year…..
How many charities are dealing with the same problems they were dealing with 10 or 20 years ago with no end in sight. Every problem is made worse by the worlds growing population. If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
GregT on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 9:29 am
“No money has ever been backed by anything but faith.”
The USD was backed by gold and silver until the early 70s Boat. Since Nixon slammed shut the gold window in 1971, effectively ending Bretton Woods, the USD has lost some 90% of it’s value through monetary inflation. The very reason why exponential growth is a requirement of the system, without which it will end in complete collapse.
“You heard it here first.”
All I ever hear from you Boat, is complete and utter nonsense. You don’t have the foggiest idea as to what you are talking about.
CAM on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 11:43 am
Eventually “young people” become “old people. Or, an I missing something.
Apneaman on Fri, 3rd Jun 2016 2:56 pm
Two Futures
“The “replacement” for these jobs was supposed to be service sector jobs. We’ve been simultaneously told that these jobs would replace the lost manufacturing jobs, and then when the low salaries are questioned, we are told that these jobs are only for teenagers or people living with their parents, despite these businesses being open year-round and during school hours, not to mention being the plurality of the newly-created jobs. Any attempt to raise salaries in this sector, we are told, would spur automation and joblessness, yet we are simultaneously told that “automation does not kill jobs,” and the “the amount of work to do is unlimited.” Left unsaid is that, by this logic, only by paying salaries that are so ultra-low that they are competitive with machines can we have sufficient jobs for people.
When you point out that once upon a time, people were paid enough to support a family on one income back when America was a manufacturing power, you are dismissively told that “those days are gone forever.”
Consider that all the calls for “more schooling” and “worker retraining” have been for naught. People dutifully marched off to get more education, but it has not saved the economy, nor the people themselves.”
http://hipcrimevocab.com/2016/05/30/two-futures/
Boat on Sat, 4th Jun 2016 2:31 pm
ape,
America is still a manufacturing power. That still doesn’t change the fact we simply brought in to many immigrants causing diminished buying power. Did you know we have more foreign born immigrants than Canada has people.
Apneaman on Sat, 4th Jun 2016 3:03 pm
Boat, from time to time I’m at someones house and they have one of the big US 24/7 “news” stations on. That’s when I know America is still the global leader in manufacturing……….bullshit.
Your country’s finished boat and so is humanity. Watch the Arctic. That’s where the timing is being decided.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XagQ3owbBEM
GregT on Sat, 4th Jun 2016 3:21 pm
Boat,
Did you know that you are a descendant of foreign born immigrants?
Stuifzand on Sat, 4th Jun 2016 4:01 pm
“Did you know that you are a descendant of foreign born immigrants?”
Look Greg, the entire town filled with wonderful immigrants, from all corners of the globe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rux-g-xmvUs
And you seriously think that when push comes to shove lilly-white Greg can hide behind his “immigrant status” and appeal for immigrant solidarity in order to escape a thorough beat-up, like the Euros in San Jose, the town with a Jewish major, who refused to defend his white citizens… because in his eyes they are gulag material, just like the naive Russians after 1917?
If so, you’re terribly naive as well, Greg.
RamzPaul expresses the sentiment many white Americans meanwhile feel as well.
Conclusion: America in its present shape is over. RamzPaul still calls himself “European-American”. But at some point Serbian-Yugoslavs dropped the epithet “Yugoslav”. Won’t be different with RamzPaul and you folks.
Welcome back in Europe, welcome homce, well, virtually speaking, that is.
And we in Europe have a vile grin on our face, because we know that 2000 year of “European normality” are soon going to be restored. It has been peace for too long already, time for some action, just to avoid boredom.
Oh and when we go ashore in Galveston, we drink our tea with a little milk, thanks in advance!
JuanP on Sat, 4th Jun 2016 4:04 pm
The decline in US births is good news for the USA and the world. While it is not enough to make a significant difference, it is definitely better than more births would be. The USA does not need more immigrants or more births. There is not a single country on this planet that needs more immigrants or more births. The USA and the world are overpopulated, and their populations are still growing, which is a tragedy.
If only people understood the consequences of their breeding!
GregT on Sat, 4th Jun 2016 4:28 pm
Stuifzand,
Not a problem where I live. No visible minority to speak of. 99.999% descendants of foreign born European immigrants.