population bust

​Most of us have read how China lost 850,000 people in their population in 2022. Why did this happen? Until recent years, Chinese authorities limited childbirth to “one child per family" policy. But, seeing where things were headed, Chinese leaders, in 2021, raised the limit to 3 children per family. And they are trying to make it financially easier for parents to have more children. But will it work?  Probably not. Children are a lot of work and take a lot of money to raise. “Let someone else do the heavy lifting!”
So that is China. What about America? Believe it or not, we parallel China’s bleak demographic issues. But we are not even talking about it here. We should be! Let’s start by comparing the median age of our respective populations. (Median age is the age where half of the population is younger, and the other half is older.) Notice the current similarity between China and the U.S.

Now for the real clincher. Here is a comparison of China’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) with that of the US. TFR is the number of children the average female will give birth to in her lifetime. It takes a TFR of 2.1 on average just to break even, to have Zero Population Growth—1 to replace the woman, 1 to replace the man and .1 for those who cannot or will not reproduce.

Note that China went below 2.1 in 1990, while the US went below replacement level in 1970 (probably due to abortion being legalized in 1973.) So America has been below replacement level since that time, which explains the aging of our population.
Bottom line, while China is rightly concerned about the demographic winter coming their way, the United States with exactly the same problems, isn’t even talking about it. We should be!