The United States Confronts the Demographic Piper

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Opinion by Joseph Chamie
Monday, March 17, 2025
Inter Press Service

Mar 17 (IPS) - As the United States confronts the unflinching demographic piper with the stark facts of reality, the new administration and Congress are denying, disengaging and dismantling.

Across virtually every demographic dimension, including population growth, fertility, mortality, morbidity, longevity, immigration, asylum, composition, ethnicity and ageing, the new US administration is repudiating, reframing and regressing on government policies, programs and commitments.

With respect to population growth, the United States is increasingly dependent on immigration. For the first time since 1850, when the US Census Bureau began compiling data on nativity, immigration accounted for the entire growth of the US population between 2022-23.

Furthermore, for the remainder of 21st century, immigration is expected to continue having significant consequences on the growth, composition and structure of the U.S. population.

The US Census Bureau’s main population projection assumes an annual net immigration level of nearly one million throughout the remainder of the 21st century. Accordingly, the US population is expected to reach 360 million by mid-century and peak at approximately 370 million by 2080 (Figure 1).

Without future immigration, however, the U.S. population will begin to decline. If immigration to the country is stopped, the US population is projected to begin declining soon and fall below 300 million by 2060. Furthermore, the U.S. population without immigration is expected to decline to 226 million by the end of the century, which would be two-thirds its current population size.

Also, about 20% of the country’s current labor force is foreign born with immigrant workers heavily involved in residential construction, agriculture, senior care and hospitality. Nevertheless, the administration seeks to modify US immigration laws and policies.

Among the administration’s modifications are policies and programs relating to expedited removal, self-deportation, mass deportation, unauthorized migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, temporary protected status, immigrant workers and legal immigrants.

Although the president ordered the shutdown of the US refugee program, a federal judge restored it temporarily while the lawsuit is pending with the program at a standstill and no refugees arriving in the country.

The composition of the U.S. population is also undergoing increasing diversity. The proportion of foreign-born living in the US, which was at a record low of about 5% in 1970, has reached a record high of 15.8% in 2025 with approximately 54 million foreign-born residents.

Moreover, while the U.S. non-Hispanic white population has been declining, the numbers of African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans have been increasing.

The ethnic composition of the foreign-born in the U.S. has also changed markedly over the recent past. Throughout the 19th and most of the 20th centuries, the US foreign-born population was predominantly from European countries, e.g., Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom.

In 2022, the top five countries contributing to the U.S. foreign-born population were no longer of European origin. The countries of Europe have been replaced by Mexico, India, China, Philippines, and El Salvador, with Mexico accounting for nearly one quarter of the foreign-born in the United States.

Regarding U.S. fertility, the country’s rate has declined from nearly four births per woman in the early 1960s to a record low of approximately 1.6 births per woman today. With respect to expected future rates, the US Census Bureau and other organizations issuing population projections do not anticipate US fertility returning to the replacement level of about 2 births per woman any time soon.

Despite the fact that US fertility has fallen well below the replacement level, the president upon taking office issued an executive order restricting birthright citizenship.

The order declared that that citizenship would be denied to babies who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. The president insists that the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, specifically Section 1, does not apply to the births of unauthorized migrants.

The question of birthright citizenship has moved through the country’s courts with a nationwide pause imposed on the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants and foreign residents. The administration has pushed for the pause to be lifted by the US Supreme Court, which recently signaled it would consider the request to review the nationwide pause.

Turning to the important matter of infant, child and maternal mortality, the United States has the highest rates of any other high-income country. Furthermore, with a life expectancy at birth of about 78 years in 2022, the United States ranks around 50th in life expectancy among countries and about 30th among the 38 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Table 1).

To make America great again with respect to its comparatively high mortality levels is a significant undertaking. To do so would require increased political commitment, comprehensive medical and health programs and additional financial resources. And at this point in time, it appears highly unlikely that the administration will take those steps.

Furthermore, despite the fact that the country's mortality rates and life expectancy lag behind other wealthy nations, the US president recently issued an executive order rolling back policies to limit drug spending by Medicaid and Medicare.

Also in its first weeks, the new administration announced far-reaching cuts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The government’s various actions have ground the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to a halt, set back its scientific reporting, censored terminology, disrupted communication activities about NIH grants and sent shockwaves through academia and the biomedical research institutions.

The new administration also imposed a new policy to cap indirect costs for NIH research grants at 15 percent. That policy change would cut billions of dollars in funding for life-saving research to develop cures and treatments for diseases.

At the Veteran Affairs agency, clinical trials have been delayed, contracts canceled and support staff fired. A much deeper round of cuts are being considered, including eliminating some 80,000 jobs and reviewing tens of thousands of contracts.

Recently, however, a federal judge ruled that federal agencies must immediately offer probationary workers purged by the new administration their jobs back. The judge found that the mass firings of employees from various government departments did not follow the law and the administration’s justification for the firings of works with probationary status was a sham. However, the administration has indicated that it would be appealing the court’s ruling.

Another judge ruled similarly saying that it was likely that the administration had engaged in an illegal scheme spanning broad swaths of the federal workforce and the administration was barred from carrying out future mass reductions.

The demographic ageing of the U.S. population has created economic concerns for the country. In 1960 about 9% of the U.S. population was aged 65 years or older. That proportion has nearly doubled to 17% today and is expected to reach close to 25% around mid-century.

With the noteworthy proportional increases in the population aged 65 years and older, the major entitlement programs, especially those aimed at the elderly, are consuming about half of all federal spending, i.e., 21% on Social Security and 28% on Medicare, Medicaid and other health care for fiscal year 2025 (Figure 2).

As the newly elected president and Republican Congressional leaders try to pass a tax cut extension to the Tax Cut and Jobs Act signed into law by the president in 2018, they are seriously considering possible cost reductions to the major entitlement programs, especially with respect to Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Additional proposals for reform and cutbacks are also being considered to reduce the rising cost of Social Security, which faces insolvency by 2033 if nothing is done by Congress. Among the various offered proposals to reduce costs are increasing the program’s age for receiving full retirement benefits, raising tax rates and the income limit earmarked for Social Security, and reducing the levels of benefits provided.

In sum, the United States is increasingly being confronted by the realities of the demographic piper. Despite those realities, the new administration and Republican Congressional leaders have decided to revise many of the country’s policies, eliminate or downsize programs, curtail scientific reporting, crackdown on dissent, decrease federal expenditures and reduce the federal workforce.

Unfortunately, the various changes, reductions, cutbacks, curtailments and fanciful promises made by the new administration do not address but only exacerbate the stark realities of the resolute demographic piper.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, "Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials".

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