PBS Newshour: How an Aging Population Poses Challenges for US Economy, Workforce and Social Programs

Jun 27, 2023 | New numbers from the Census Bureau show the U.S. population is older than it’s ever been, with the nation’s median age over 38. William Brangham spoke with Philip Bump and Wendy Edelberg about how an older America could pose significant challenges for the economy, workforce and social programs in the years to come.

Germany Crosses the Demographic Rubicon: 20-35's a Minority by 2020

Non-white Births Outnumber White Births for the First Time in US
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: White births in the United States are no longer in the majority, according to new data from the US Census Bureau.

Minority races - Hispanics, blacks and Asians and other mixed races - accounted for 50.4 percent of births over the year to July, accounting for a majority for the first time in US history.

The demographic milestone had been expected for years in a country founded by European whites and that early on relied heavily on the work of enslaved African populations, then went through a civil war and civil rights battle over issues of race.

In recent years, the growth of Hispanic populations immigrating from Latin America has hastened a decline in the majority status of white births, the census data suggested.

"This is an important landmark," said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University. "This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders." » | Thursday, May 17, 2012

Atheist Demographics III - "The Great Shrinking" and Replacement of the Unfit

Muslimische Demografie – Muslim Demographics – Démographie musulmane

There Goes the Neighbourhood: Change Sweeps Black America's Cultural Home
THE OBSERVER: For much of the last century Harlem was the heart of the black community, but now some locals fear that whites and Hispanics are invading their turf

There was a time when the sight of Sandra Schulze's blond hair in the middle of Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park would have been a shock. But last week, as the 38-year-old graphic designer played with her two-year-old son, it was more a sign of the times.

Harlem has long been one of the most famed names in black American culture. The neighbourhood produced jazz greats, political giants and sports heroes. It kept a firm black foothold in the heart of Manhattan. But that is changing, and fast. Schulze, who moved to Harlem from Connecticut a week ago with her advertising executive husband, is the new face of what was once a place synonymous with either black pride or black ghetto-isation. Not that Schulze, who is German, sees it that way. She just sees a wonderful place to raise her son, with cheap rents, enormous apartments and friendly locals. "So far, it's been wonderful. It is a little like Paris, a little like Berlin. I love it," she gushed.

Schulze is part of a tide of newcomers to Harlem that is changing the historic neighbourhood. In Greater Harlem, black Americans no longer make up a majority. They comprise about four in 10 people, being pushed out by white gentrifiers and the explosive growth of the Latino population of Spanish Harlem. In fact, the black population of Greater Harlem is at its lowest in absolute terms since the 1920s. Those figures are from 2008, but a new census will take a snapshot of America on 1 April 2010 and its results will be announced later this year. For Harlem, one thing is almost certain: the neighbourhood will continue to have become less black and more white and brown. That is mimicking trends at a national level. >>> Paul Harris in New York | Sunday, March 28, 2010

Life, the Gift We Treasure Most, Yet Refuse to Bestow on Others
THE TELEGRAPH: Why does an educated, prosperous society choose not to reproduce itself, asks Charles Moore.

Our village is unusual in having a mainline railway station. Each day, a small number of people walk up from the station and past our house on their way to work. It is quite a long walk – perhaps a mile and a half – but I imagine they walk because they do not earn enough to own cars. They are virtually all foreign. They are on their way to serve as carers and nurses in an old people's home, whose inmates are virtually all British.

This procession is a daily visual illustration of what happens to a country when it lives and, increasingly, dies, under an illusion.

If you raise the subject of population with British people, most will tell you that the problem is overpopulation. There are too many people in the world, they say, and our own island is overcrowded.

Certainly, population growth causes problems, of which the greatest is the contest for resources, which can lead to war. But, as we are rediscovering with the recession, something frightening happens when what promised to go up, goes down.

Even quite marginal change has big effects. If you are getting 2 or 3 per cent richer each year, you can see a path of widening opportunity ahead. If you are getting 2 or 3 per cent poorer (let alone, as is currently the case, nearly 5 per cent), the future prospect narrows.

So it is with population; and the change is not marginal, but drastic. In 1960, OECD countries had a fertility rate of 3.2 children. Today, they have one of 1.6, well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1. So the rate has halved in my lifetime, moving from fast increase to steady decline. We in the West are collectively deciding not to bestow on others the gift which we most value for ourselves – life. >>> Charles Moore | Friday, July 03, 2009