Recent Demographic Trends and the Family

For demographers, perhaps the most stunning set of changes in the family to have emerged over the last century are changes that drove what appeared to have been exploding populations, both in the world at large as well as in individual countries, to changes that now raise the distinct possibility of future population decline in a non-negligible number of nations. These changes are in turn intimately connected to profound changes in family life and most particularly in fertility—trends in how many women, on average, remain childless over their lifetimes, and for those women who become mothers, how many births they will have. What is especially intriguing is “American exceptionalism”—that the United States appears to have been largely immune, at least to date, from demographic trends that are so pronounced and potentially worrisome in so many other advanced industrialized nations. I review what lies behind the shift from exploding populations to the possibility of population decline in at least some parts of the world, and then speculate on what may be the likely sources of why the United States has been an exception to these trends. This then leads me to highly speculative remarks about why two specific groups very often seen in a negative light—immigrants and women who give birth outside of formal marriage—have played an important role in American demographic exceptionalism, and why these groups may likewise continue to be a major factor in why the future of the United States may be far rosier than that of other advanced industrialized nations. However, I caution that this optimistic scenario depends crucially on realizing the social, economic, and demographic potential of these subpopulations. In this essay, I review what demographers regard as perhaps the most striking family trend to have emerged over the last century—a shift from what appeared to be exploding populations, both in the world at large as well as in individual nations, because too many were having too many children, to the emergence in a growing number of nations of what appears to be a shift in which too many are having too few children. Why might we care about these issues? On one hand, Americans tend to regard the issue of who chooses to remain childless, or how many children are born to those who become parents, as very private matters, to be decided by a pregnant woman or the prospective parents. But we also have a collective interest in children because they constitute the future of any society, and this in turn means that we might worry if too many have too few children. What is especially intriguing is “American exceptionalism,” that the United States appears to be largely immune to what is so pronounced and potentially worrisome in a growing number of nations. So how can it be that worries about an exploding world population have turned into worries about too many having too few children? The correct answer, in my view, is that it remains the case that in some nations, too many are having too many children, with these nations continuing to have far too rapid population growth. There is thus a broad consensus among social scientists that these countries would benefit were rapid population growth to be curbed. But in other nations, there have been emerging trends that look as if too many are having too few children; thus, there has been a growing concern, which I share, that these countries would benefit were these trends to be curbed. In this essay, I review what lies behind the shift from exploding populations to the possibility of population decline. I then discuss what are the likely sources of why the United States has been an exception to trends seen in so many other developed nations of the world. This discussion then leads to highly speculative remarks on my part regarding the future of US, which in my view is likely to be substantially more promising than for most other highly industrialized nations. However, I also note that this optimistic scenario depends crucially on realizing the “demographic potential” of subpopulations that have often been viewed as problematic. This leads me to conclude that these issues will pose difficult but critically important challenges in the coming decades. Keywords: demographic potential; dynamics of population change; fertility change; first demographic transition; immigration; Malthus; nonmarital fertility; population aging; sub-replacement fertility