Demographically, America Looks More Like Europe. NewsWire

NewsWire: 3/3/22

• Demographically, America is looking more European. Falling birthrates and immigration, as well as changing cultural attitudes, are making the U.S. less of an outlier. (The Economist)
  
• NH: The U.S. and other English-speaking countries have long been demographic outliers. For decades, they saw relatively higher fertility rates, higher immigration, and greater religiosity than the European counterparts. The U.S. in particular is uniquely high in levels of religiosity.
• But as our readers know, these differences have been gradually lessening. U.S. births and immigration are both falling steadily. With both births and immigration declining, the rate of natural increase barely hovered above zero last year. (See “US Population Growth Nearly Comes to a Standstill.”) Religiosity, too, has declined steadily, so although the religiousness of the U.S. remains higher than in most of Europe, the gap is narrowing.

• Overall, pretty much every sign of demographic dynamism--whether it’s births, immigration, or mobility rates--is declining or has stagnated.
• As a result, The Economist declares that the U.S. is losing its sense of exceptionalism. (See “Like the U.S., England-Wales Experiencing a Birth Rate Decline.”) This much I agree with. As shown in the chart below, our period of "fertility exceptionalism" began in the 1980s and lasted until just before the Great Recession. Since then, we've trended closer and closer to the euro zone.

• I don't, however, agree with their assertion that what's keeping us from near-complete demographic stagnation is the nonwhite population. While it's true that nonwhites have been the driving force behind recent population growth, they've also seen the biggest fertility declines in recent years, particularly among Hispanics. Nonwhites' fertility rates remain higher than that of non-Hispanic whites, but the differential is much smaller than it was even just a decade ago. The growing share of Asian immigrants, who tend to have lower fertility rates than Hispanic immigrants, has also contributed to slower population growth instead of fueling it.
• Without ethnic minorities, the U.S. would indeed be seeing even slower growth. But it would be on par with Western Europe's, not Japan's.