CV NEWS FEED // The United States Census Bureau announced Tuesday that America’s population increased at a slower rate in 2021 than any previous year “since the founding of the nation.”
Citing “historical decennial censuses and annual population estimates,” the bureau reported that “population grew only 0.1%” in 2021:
The year 2021 is the first time since 1937 that the U.S. population grew by fewer than one million people, featuring the lowest numeric growth since at least 1900, when the Census Bureau began annual population estimates.
Apart from the last few years, when population growth slowed to historically low levels, the slowest rate of growth in the 20th century was from 1918-1919 amid the influenza pandemic and World War I.
“Slower population growth has been a trend in the United States for several years, the result of decreasing fertility and net international migration, combined with increasing mortality due to an aging population,” the report explained:
In other words, since the mid-2010’s, births and net international migration have been declining at the same time deaths have been increasing. The collective impact of these trends is slower population growth.
This year marks the “[first] time on record” that more “US population growth came from immigration than the net natural increase due to births/deaths,” noted Josh Boak of the Associated Press.
The news comes just two weeks after billionaire Elon Musk caused a stir by warning gravely that America’s declining birth rate would lead to catastrophe. “There are not enough people,” Musk said. “I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.”
“Please look at the numbers,” he added, “if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words.”
“The population trend—coined a ‘demographic winter’ by social scientists—has steadily worsened over recent decades, primarily in first-world countries,” reported Tristan Vanheuckelom of the European Conservative at the time.
