Demography* is hot!

"Yes, you will live to be 80!" flashed the headline on MSN's home page recently.  The article by Liz Pulliam Weston that followed made pointed use of statistics on life expectancy.   

Take note: 75% of men and 87% of women -- live to age 65.  And, the longer you live,  the more likely you will continue to do so.  At birth a man's life expectancy is almost 75 years, but if he makes it to 70, statistics give him 13 more years to live.  Women do even better.  At birth their life expectancy is almost 80 years, but if they reach 70, they are likely to live about 16 years longer!  

Why are such statistics suddenly compelling?  Because the golden years of retirement may now stretch two decades or more!   In a nation with an aging population, one that hasn't been in the habit of saving and is still in the midst of a serious recession, this is a new and daunting prospect!    As Weston writes unless you want to shiver "through your last years in a threadbare cardigan, you'll have to figure out a way to set aside some money" beyond the average $1000 benefit check current retirees receive. 

Are there some other demographic facts we should pay attention to? 

Think about these. Educational attainment in this country continues to rise, but the gap between the earning power of a high school diploma and a baccalaureate degree remains dramatic.  Although 87% of our population over 25 had graduated from high school in 2008, up from 83% a decade earlier, their annual earnings averaged only about $31,000, while the roughly 30% who persisted through a bachelor’s degree made on average close to $57,000.  Can demographics help us figure out who isn’t likely to have a shot at earning that extra $26,000? 

Recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that more than half (53%) the Asians in the U.S., but only a third (33%) of non-Hispanic whites, 20% of blacks, and 13% of Hispanics have baccalaureate degrees (U.S. Census Bureau News, 4/27/09).  In other words, significantly more than half of our white (66%), black (80%) and Hispanic (87%) populations are likely to find their earning power limited by the absence of a college degree.   Compelling?  You bet - for both the individuals and families affected by low wages as well as a nation struggling to maintain its economic position in the face of newly emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil.  Maybe we can convince MSN to give this home page billing.

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Challenges Ahead for the 2010 Census

January 29, 2010

Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, spoke at a forum on the 2010 Census on Jan. 21 about challenges the Census Bureau faces in attempting to count everybody. He also talked about the potential problem of differing data from the 2010 Census and American Community Survey. The event was held at the center; it also was sponsored by the American Statistical Association and the DC chapter of the American Association of Public Opinion Research.

In this edited transcript, ellipses are not used in order to facilitate reading.  These are his comments on the Amercian Community Survey which provides the nation with its critical social-economic data.

American Community Survey and the 2010 Census

The American Community Survey is really a rather remarkable operation.  I was skeptical in the ’90s that this would be pulled off, but it seems to be working.  We get detailed, census-like data. (And by the way, I say “census-like” data:  It’s not quite the same, but the majority of data users think it is the same as the census, and for the non-sophisticated users, the distinction is completely missed.)  We get annual data; we’re getting data based on averages across 12 months of surveys, 36 months and 60 months.  We get annual data for the total population of areas and for the characteristics.

The distinction here is those population totals don’t come from the ACS survey itself. The totals come from the population estimates program of the Census Bureau, and are not census-like.  The ACS totals by race come from the population estimates program.

This distinction is an important one and it’s overlooked by most of the people who use it.  We’re seeing a broad user community develop:  That’s an invaluable tool for census planning. There are a lot of sophisticated users. There are a lot of unsophisticated users. And there are a lot of people who should be using it, who aren’t.  But the confusion between “census” and “survey” is ongoing and is difficult.

The challenge and the potential train wreck, I’m afraid, is that the data users have been getting data from the ACS for their areas, for their communities, for several years.  There are going to be a series of numbers out there that people will have used.  And the census is going to come in and the numbers are going to be different from those in the ACS.  It’s going to be a lot different in some places because of coverage error; it’s going to be a lot different in some places because of estimation error.  But it’s going to be different.

The problem, I think, is the credibility of both data systems is going to be at issue.  There are going to be large differences in places.  The political users of this will want whichever is larger, and they’ll challenge whichever one is smaller.  We–the data user community and the Census Bureau, as the producer of this–are going to need a strong defense of both data systems. It’s going to require help from key users like us to emphasize that these are both valuable systems.  We have to explain why do both.  I think we need to preempt that criticism as soon as we can and talk about the value of both of these data systems.

The census, in addition to the political uses for reapportionment and redistricting, offers us an opportunity to re-benchmark the population estimates and the ACS. It’s critical that we are able to do that periodically.  But the ACS data provides a broad range of information and it gives us up-to-date annual data that is a tremendous resource, and much better than anything we had.

The feedback of ACS in the census process was alluded to earlier.  I think it’s been a major breakthrough in planning for the census, and the value of it I don’t think can be understated.  The feedback that we haven’t seen yet, to my satisfaction at least, is the feedback from the ACS into the population estimates program, that can improve and make the ACS more census-like, if you will.

Getting the Message Out

I think what we need over the next year or so is to be very clear in presenting ACS data that it’s not the census, that these are based on [population] estimates, and that the census is coming and it’s going to help us improve these.  The Census Bureau will be releasing 2009 ACS data in September, and I’m sure that people will think those are the census figures.  It’s going to be very important that they be divorced from the census product, that they present it as something different.

The first tract-level information from the ACS is about to be presented in September, and those data are going to be based on 10-year-old [population] estimates, or estimates carried forward by 10 years.  They’re going to be quite different from what we’ll see in the census.  I think it needs to be labeled in a way that’s very, very clear that this is not the census and be very careful.  I think it’s very important, and I think the plans are in place that the 2010 ACS data, which will be released in late 2011, will be weighted to the census counts.  I think those are the plans – I’m not sure.

But it’s important, especially for small areas, that we don’t get two sets of numbers for 2010; that can be confusing.  My own preference would be to even delay those [2010 ACS numbers] a little bit, rather than release data with 2000-based weights, when we have the 2010 data.

Finally, I think, as an analyst who tries to look at this data over time, it’s been very difficult to monitor changes from year to year, because the weighting has been adjusted three times in the last three years.  I think to make this data most useful for analytic purposes, it would be extremely important to go back, look at the last five years of ACS data and produce a set of consistent numbers that are weighted both to the 2000 Census and 2010 Census so that we have a clean product going forward.

I think there’s a challenge for the Census Bureau, certainly, but I think for us, as sophisticated data users, there’s a challenge that these data will present, to be clear to our consumers and the population at large.

 Financial Times reports that family planning may be coming back in style.

For more than 15 years family planning has not been on the international aid agenda.  Reproductive health, women's education, reduction of infant mortality were all seen has having priority over providing women with birth control to enable them to have the number of children they wanted.  Growing concern over aging in the developed world ( due mainly to low fertility) and the increasing  contentious battle over abortion in the United States all conspired to remove birth control from the agenda.  A recent article in the Financial Times suggest that concern over the environment and the failure of Africa to complete the demographic transition may bring family planning back into the international development discussion. 

Financial Times FT.com

In the family way

By Andrew Jack

Published: December 10 2009 02:00 | Last updated: December 10 2009 02:00

Five years ago, Boniface K'Oyugi began to receive troubling news. After 30 years during which family planning programmes had halved the number of births per woman in Kenya to fewer than five, the trend went into reverse.

"When you have a high birthrate people have difficulties with clothing, educating and feeding their children," says Mr K'Oyugi, who heads his country's National Co-ordinating Agency for Population and Development. "We are unable to create sufficient jobs when they enter the workforce - and unemployed people living on marginal land can create conflict."

His concerns reflect a growing worry that some developing countries have failed to follow the broader "demographic transition" to lower fertility levels that has occurred in past decades in the western world and more recently across Latin America and much of Asia. Experts and policymakers are calling increasingly for a renewed and more nuanced approach to family planning, focused on countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as others such as Yemen and Pakistan that trail the trend.

The issue is coming back on to the international agenda after a long absence. Many policymakers argue that without fresh efforts, economic growth will be severely impeded, sparking political instability and environmental degradation.

Rwanda, where pressure on land helped trigger genocide in the past, is among countries taking the lead. With Africa's population symbolically now reaching 1bn people, and the current debate on climate change provoking new concern about the effect of further births, there is a broader effort to shake off the complacency of recent years.

"If you look at countries like Mali, where the population is doubling, agricultural production has not kept up and land is being lost to desertification, you are really in for a Malthusian disaster," says John Cleland from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The solutions, he argues, are cheap and well understood: the provision of contraceptives to the 200m women who are estimated to want them but are unable to gain access. They need enhanced family planning services, subsidies and promotional programmes, with support from doctors, teachers and political leaders. "All the lessons were learnt 20 years ago," says Prof Cleland.

To some, such arguments underplay human ingenuity in overcoming difficulties and confuse cause and effect. In most of the world, birth rates have fallen consistently as countries develop economically, slowing global population growth towards a projected equilibrium currently forecast at 9bn people in 2050 compared with 6.8bn today.

Bill Gates, whose philanthropic foundation is a large funder of the fight against childhood disease, says: "Fairly quickly, parents will have less kids knowing that their chance of having a couple survive to take care of them will be much higher if the health situation improves."

Even in countries with a currently high proportion of young people such as China and India - let alone more developed ones including Italy, Russia and Japan that are already feeling the impact of a predominantly older population - discussion is turning to the burdens of supporting the elderly.

A long-standing view holds that poverty reduction comes before family planning; that the birth rate falls only once the costs of having more children exceed the benefits. Conception remains high as long as parents have children who die in large numbers, want extra hands to work their land or see few sources of support in retirement other than their own offspring.

Y et this pattern - with family size falling simply as the consequence of development - is not universal. Active family planning in Nepal and Bangladesh in the late 20th century significantly reduced fertility rates in countries that were still poor, for example.

"It is not so much a question of which comes first as of getting a virtuous circle of reinforcing changes going," says Stan Bernstein at the United Nations Population Fund, pointing to all the women who want but do not have contraception. "The challenge is not to make something happen that isn't in progress but to see that the benefits and opportunities are available to all."

Historically, childhood deaths and adult infections have fallen largely as a result of improved nutrition and sanitation spurred by economic growth. But in recent years, medical advances and increased funding rapidly extended vaccinations and treatments for many infectious diseases across the developing world.

John May, a specialist in African demography at the World Bank, says: "Economic and social development is of course the best contraceptive, but contraceptives are also good for development." When fertility is high and population growth rapid, he adds, instead of a virtuous circle there emerges a vicious one.

A recent study by his agency argued that demographic factors predicted two-thirds of the shortfall in subSaharan Africa's economic growth compared with other developing regions. The burden of parents looking after their children and the instability of rapidly rising youth unemployment were the main constraints.

Such views helped trigger funding for family planning programmes in the second half of the last century, providing contraceptives, counselling and abortions to supplement traditional methods led by abstinence and prolonged breast-feeding to stagger births further apart.

They were supported by non-profit groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and large donors led by the US, notably beginning with President Richard Nixon. They culminated in the UN international conference on population and development in Cairo in 1994, which called for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health provision.

But funding and political commitment never matched the rhetoric. There was a shift to broader and less well focused "reproductive rights", at a time of suspicion of birth control as coercive or smacking of neo-colonialism. China's one-child family policy had required strong social pressure; forced sterilisation had taken place during Indira Gandhi's state of emergency in India.

Equally, fertility rates were already on the wane in much of the world. "Family planning was killed by its own success," says Mr Bernstein. "A growing number of countries reached a plateau, and people took the attitude that the problem was solved. They forgot that new generations needed to be re-educated."

Third, donors became inspired by new fashions, notably a focus on tackling diseases. None became a greater drain than HIV/Aids, especially in Africa, which bore the greatest brunt of the virus as millions died and many tens of thousands of children were orphaned. "Vertical" programmes improved treatment for individual diseases but undermined other parts of poorly funded healthcare systems, drawing doctors and nurses away from jobs including family planning.

Finally, there was a hardening attitude from religious groups including the Catholic Church and evangelical Protestants, who remain highly influential in Africa, as well as "family" groups influencing US policy. Ronald Reagan's so-called "global gag rule" in 1984 banned federal funding to non-governmental organisations that performed or promoted abortion. It was reinstituted by George W. Bush after his inauguration in 2001. "It put poison in the atmosphere and had a widespread chilling effect," says Adrienne Germain, head of the International Women's Health Coalition, who says support faded for emergency contraception, intra-uterine devices and other approaches. "When the US sneezes, everyone gets sick. The years of the Bush administration had a profound effect."

Defenders of Mr Bush argue that he helped save millions of lives in Africa through a substantial expansion in programmes to treat those with HIV. But these also focused on treatment and on prevention programmes that encouraged abstinence and fidelity at the expense of condom distribution.

The result was that funding, estimated at about $340m (€231m, £210m) a year today, stagnated. The UN abandoned plans for a 10-year anniversary of the Cairo conference in 2004, for fear that the US would upset a fragile international consensus. Even events to take stock this year have been hastily arranged, reflecting a reluctance to plan ahead of the 2008 US presidential elections.

But in recent months, the mood has begun to change again. One of Barack Obama's first decisions as president this year was to scrap the global gag rule. He has since announced an overhaul of global health funding, with fresh emphasis on broader programmes including family planning rather than focusing on a handful of high-priority diseases.

His actions have been mirrored by other large donors. "Integration" is the new buzzword. "Family planning is a necessary part of health services," says Ms Germain. "It has to be offered in maternity clinics and alongside treatment for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases."

The UK's Department for International Development and Australia's Ausaid have placed fresh emphasis on such approaches. The World Bank, criticised in an internal review for letting family planning fall to just 2 per cent of its health, nutrition and population programme budgets in the decade to 2006, is preparing a new strategy for Africa. Along with the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, it is providing funding to support health systems. Mr Gates' foundation provided significant support to a family planning conference in Kampala last month that attracted 1,500 participants.

The Copenhagen summit now under way has added a fresh impetus to debates about the need to stabilise the world's population - although many family planning advocates are wary of over-emphasising the link, given that people in rich countries generate much larger carbon footprints.

That still leaves considerable debate over why African countries have struggled so much to make the demographic transition to lower fertility and consequent economic development. The answers will help determine whether even with enhanced family planning, fertility will fall sustainably. Prof Cleland suggests that not only do African cultural values place emphasis on larger families but communal childcare within clans puts less responsibility on individual parents to limit the number of children.

Greater emphasis on family planning may not be a sufficient condition to accelerate a region's demographic and economic transition - but it seems at least to be a necessary one.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

PEW RESEARCH CENTER BEGINS NEW POLL ON CENSUS

In preparation for the 2010 Census the Pew Research Center will be conducting a series of studies about the public’s knowledge of the Census.  The first poll was conducted Jan 6-10 and included people with both cell phones and land lines.

The poll found  that most Americans think the census is very important (60%) and say they definitely will participate (58%). But enthusiasm for the census is not universal. In particular, younger people, Hispanics and the less well educated are not as familiar with the census and are less likely to participate than other groups. In addition, there are partisan differences in opinions about the value of the census, and in personal willingness to participate.

The Center determined that age was the most important factor in predicting participation.  Older Americans were much more likely to say they will definitely participate.  Democrats were much more likely to say they would participate than Republicans which is a reversal of past participation when whites and middle class were more likely to participate.

There also is a partisan divide in intention to participate; all other things being equal, the probability of Democrats saying they definitely will participate is .75 while the probability for Republicans is .56.  Failure of Republicans to participate could upend some of the re apportionment predictions.  These predictions have Republican states like Arizona, Texas and Florida gaining seats.

The survey also probed knowledge of some basic facts about the census. Most Americans know that the census is used to decide states’ representation in Congress (64%) and that the census is not used to locate illegal immigrants so they can be arrested (68%). But just 31% know that participation in the census is required by law.

Read the full report Most View Census Positively, But Some Have Doubts on the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press' Web site.

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Scam Email Regarding Census 2010

Terri Anne Lowenthal has reported that a email is being circulated using the name of the Better Business Bureau which has a great deal of misinformation about the 2010 Census.  The most serious warning is that one only has to complete the number of people in the household rather than answer all ten questions.  To learn more about this scam go to The Census Project Blog

Census count starts this week in Alaska:

The 2010 census count starts on January 25 with enumeration of the Inupiat Eskimo village in Noorvik, Alaska.  Director Groves will be on hand to help launch the enumeration in Native Alaskan villages, which the bureau must count earlier than most American communities because residents disperse for hunting and fishing after the still-frozen ground begins to thaw, making access to the villages difficult.

The Native areas are counted using the "Update-Enumerate" operation, during which census takers visit homes to update the address list by confirming the location of each housing unit and then enumerate residents on the spot.  The procedure is used in other remote areas of the country, including American Indian reservations, where it is difficult to compile accurate address lists.

Rural communities where homes do not have city-style addresses (e.g. 123 Main Street) are counted using the "Update-Leave" operation, when census workers will visit homes to update the address list, add missing addresses they might uncover, and leave questionnaires for residents to mail back.  Update-Leave procedures also will be used in several counties along the Gulf Coast still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and in some communities where residents only receive mail at Post Office boxes (census forms will not be delivered to P.O. boxes).  The Update-Leave operation starts March 1, while Update-Enumerate starts in most areas on March 22.

THE NEW AMERICA

The Census Bureau estimates that the 2010 Census will find  that  Hispanics have  become the largest minority group in the United States, surpassing the black population who have historically been the largest minority group.  The combination of legal and illegal immigration and high birth rates among a young population will result in almost 16% of residents of the United States identifying themselves as Hispanic compared to 13.4% for blacks.  Hispanic refers to ethnicity rather than race and both are self declared on the Census. 

In the same report the Bureau projected that that by 2050 the nation will have no majority population.  Non -Hispanic whites will be 46% of the population while Hispanics will be 29 percent and blacks 16%.  Looking at young children in the United States provides a portrait of our future. According to Bill Frey, a demographer at Brookings Insitute, the  “Latinisation" of        America is the most important demographic change in the 21st Century. 

Currently white children are already a minority in 31 of America's large metropolitan areas and according to Census projections non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in preschool by 2012 and in the national population by 2042. Minority students are expected to exceed 50 percent of public school enrollment by 2020. In Texas, 51 percent of the births in 2008 were to Hispanic women although they were only 42% of the women of child bearing age ( 15-44) .

 The Southern Education Foundation reported that the South had become the first region in the country where more than half of public students are poor and more than half are members of minorities.  Four of the 15 states in the report - Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas  - had a majority of both low-income and minority pupils. In contrast to the growing diverse young population, 83% of the population over 50 define themselves as white.. and 75% define themselves as non-Hispanic white.  

These changes will present the nation with several public policy challenges including addressing the educational challenge of a multi-cultural society, meeting the public infrastructure demands of an almost 50 percent increase in US population, reshaping our employment practices to embrace the 21st century workforce and addressing the demanding communication challenges between an increasingly diverse younger population and an older ethnically homogeneous population.  The nation's history of racism and "classism" will overlay and influence many of our responses.

  In the next weeks I will look at the demographic components of the challenges the nation faces.  It is important, in light of our past history with racial and economic differences, that we include them openly in the discussions as we struggle to prepare our nation for the 21^st Century.   Ellis Cose has a very timely article in January 11 edition of Newsweek about how America redefines ethnicity.  He referred to a book by Karen Brodkin Sacks entitled “ How Did Jews Become White Folks?” which was about how Euro-ethnics become white and middle class.  In this day of political correctness and ethnic politics will that be possible again?.  Our future may depend upon it.   

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ALL STATES SHOULD BE SO LUCKY

FROM THE CONTRACOSTA NEWS (Dec 28, 2009)

 With the state strapped for cash, 20 private foundations has pumped $9 million into outreach efforts designed to help the Bay Area and all of California get counted properly in the 2010 U.S. Census.

The charities say they have awarded grants to more than 125 community organizations that have intimate connections to people the U.S. Census Bureau had difficulty counting in the past. The list of hard-to-reach residents includes immigrants who do not speak English, college students, people who live in crowded or inaccessible housing, people who move frequently and those who might be wary of authorities.

Grant recipients range from Fremont's Afghan Coalition to the Bananas baby-sitting network of Berkeley to the NAACP of eastern Contra Costa County.

"We are funding a lot of networks of trusted messengers who can get the word out," said Cathy Cha of the San Francisco-based Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund. "Those are the kinds of relationships the government doesn't do well."

The once-a-decade count of every American is fast approaching, but California has little money to spend to make sure all its residents get counted. The stakes are also high: Results are used to draw the boundaries of congressional districts and to determine how much federal money cities and counties will get over the next 10 years.

The state spent about $24 million on outreach in 2000 but has just about $2 million for the effort this time around, said Louis Stewart of the governor's 2010 California Complete Count Committee.

The federal government has filled some of that gap through stimulus money, but the Census Bureau does not directly pay nonprofit community groups for projects or labor. Most of the federal money is spent on hiring local census staff and in-kind costs -- printing "Be Counted" signs and other promotional materials that nonprofit groups can distribute to their members.

"They're trying to be very careful. The bureau, quite frankly, is afraid of associations with certain groups," said Ted Wang, a consultant working with the California foundations. "They want to be as mainstream as possible, not to offend anybody, because they have to count everybody."

Foundations are less timid because they are not taxpayer-funded, and they are putting their money where they think it will have the highest impact -- whether it's for a mural, a prayer breakfast, a skilled community organizer or an event for the homeless, who often get overlooked in census counts. Unlike federal census workers, the grantees do not help residents fill in the census forms, but they can tell them how important it is to do so and push them to the right place.

"The main reason for the undercount is not that people don't want to participate, it's that people don't get the questionnaire in the mail," Wang said.

Local funders that have joined the private campaign include the Moraga-based Y & H Soda Foundation, the Oakland-based Akonadi Foundation and several organizations in San Francisco including the James Irvine Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation and the Walter Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

The funders are distributing money directly to community groups that will use them for projects in the coming weeks and months. The Census Bureau begins mailing out its questionnaires to every household in mid-March.

Armed with a $10,000 grant from the San Francisco Foundation, the East Bay health organization La Clinica de la Raza will train bilingual student volunteers at Mt. Diablo High School next month. The teens will be tasked to reach out to the Spanish-speaking immigrant community living in Concord's Monument corridor. When the census is over, they will get mini-scholarships of up to $300 for their work. "We want to make sure people are not afraid of the census," said coordinator Maria Reyes of La Clinica.

In many cases, the grantees were chosen because they can overcome language barriers. In other cases, they will overcome fears of an intrusive federal government. The Oakland-based Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California hopes to do both with a grant from the San Francisco Foundation to reach out to local Muslims who speak Farsi or Pashto.

Although it is the government's job to count every resident, and the duty of every resident to participate, the foundations say they have important motivations to help the cause. Many of them focus their charities on California's poorest residents, who can be some of the hardest to count and face the worst impacts if there is a miscount.

The government uses census statistics to determine how much money each region gets for programs such as food stamps, school lunches, foster care, housing vouchers, unemployment insurance and economic development grants.

"If a county or region or a neighborhood is not counted completely, and they don't get the money they need, they will probably be coming to foundations for help," said Navin Moul of the San Francisco Foundation. The foundation has donated about $500,000 to grass roots groups doing census outreach in the Bay Area.

The foundations also have expressed concerns about California's political representation. Because the state's population has grown steadily since 2000, the state should end up with the same number of representatives to Congress after the 2010 census is tabulated. If there is a severe miscount, however, the state could lose a congressional district to faster-growing states or those that do a better job counting themselves.

"We all have a stake in this, we all recognized it and we all came together around the census," said Gigi Barsoum, program officer for The California Endowment, a health-focused foundation headquartered in Los Angeles. The endowment has spent about $4 million on statewide census outreach, the largest individual contribution so far.

The initiative began earlier this year, said Barsoum, when her fund and a few others realized economic troubles and the rash of foreclosures could lead to a miscount. They approached a Sebastopol-based group called Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and asked for help. Soon, a coalition of funders was born.

Federal officials say they are pleased about the private push, since it will help them leverage their reach throughout the state.

"The foundations looked at the landscape and really tapped into our hardest-to-count communities," said Lia Bolden, a regional official for the Census Bureau. "It's a good thing and it's nice to have them at the table in a very committed way."

450 Million by   2050 ?

The Census Bureau has published new population projections for the United States population through 2050. These projections raise a wide range of issues about the future size of the US population, the age and ethnic composition of that population and the distribution of the population across the country.  Immigration is clearly the driving force in our population growth.  And the numbers of immigrants who come to the United States is a policy debate than can and should be had.

To arrive at these projections the Bureau makes certain assumptions about the birth, death, and immigration rates. In the current projections, birth and death rates are held constant while the immigration rates are changed. .The new projections use four models of immigration including high, low, constant and zero immigration rates.  The constant immigration rates assume that the current rates (approximately 1 million people) will remain while the zero immigration rate demonstrates the impact that immigration is having on US population growth.

Based on these different assumptions, the Bureau projects that the population could grow from the currently estimated 308 million to 399 million people with low rates of immigration to 458 million people with high rates of immigration. Under the lowest projection, the   Bureau estimates that the nation will grow by about 30% increasing by 2.25 million people per year.  Under the high projection, the nation will add 140 million people, growing at a rate of about 3.5 million people per year.  With zero immigration the Bureau projects that the nation will have 322 million people.

The immigrants arriving will change the racial and ethnic composition of the country and somewhere between 2040 and 2050 the country will become a majority-minority country which means that no racial or ethnic group will constitute more than 50 % of the country.  The Census Bureau collects information on race and ethnicity. Current national projections are that whites (Hispanic and non-Hispanic white) will be 74 percent of the population while blacks will be 13% and Asians almost 8 percent.  However, the Bureau projects that 46 percent of the white population will be non-Hispanic white and 28 percent of the population will be Hispanic who define themselves racially as white, black or other.

If current internal migration trends continue, the south and west will continue to increase their proportion of the nation’s population at the expense of the North and Midwest.  However, the West has severe water challenges which may not enable that region of the country to accommodate all of the people who are moving there.  

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Despite the debate that will rage next year about immigration reform, it probably will not include a discussion of what size we want the United States to be, how fast should we get there and how should we plan to accommodate between 100 and 150 million additional people. There will be no discussion of he impact of that many additional people on our roads, our schools, our carbon emissions, or our democratic institutions. Population growth is not a topic in the immigration debate, despite the fact that immigration policy will determine the future size, composition, age structure and population distribution of our nation.  Shouldn’t we have that discussion?  .

TWAS THE EVE OF THE CENSUS

 The Census and the Recession

More than 1.2 million part-time jobs will be created to conduct  the 2010 Census.  Although these jobs will be part-time, they are well paying and will have an impact upon the unemployment rate in the nation. These jobs pay between $12 and $25 per hour.  The hiring for the 2010 Census may reduce the unemployment rate temporarily by perhaps 1percentage point.This is stark contrast to the  2000 Census. 

The 2000 Census was taken in the spring of 2000 when the economy was operating at full capacity and just beginning the downturn from the technology boom.  It was very difficult to find people to work as enumerators and clerks in the Census operation.   The 2010 Census is a completely different picture.  With an unemployment rate of 10% the Bureau is inundated with applications ... and the applicants are quite highly skilled.  

This became apparent with the first massive hiring last April. The Bureau hired 140,000 people to complete the address canvassing effort. People walk the streets with GPS machines to verify every address in the United States.  To hire 140,000 people the Bureau planned to have 700,000 applicants but got more than 1.2 million. In addition, the educational level of the applicants was much higher than in the previous two Censuses. The Bureau  had a significant larger number of college educated applicants than in the past.  One result of this more skilled work force was that the address canvassing was completed in record time with fewer mistakes.

 The Bureau is now preparing to hire more than a million people to complete the Census after the initial March mail-in.  Current estimates are that between 60 and 65% of the estimated 145 million households in the US will return the questionnaire. The number of households is much higher than originally anticipated because of 8 million new units submitted by local governments.  That means that 58 million households will have to be called or visited up to six times by a enumerator. The Census is an extraordinary undertaking, a massive mobilization that gets almost no attention. 

The data from the Census and the American Community Survey is used to measure progress and change in the United States. Leaders have taken great pride in the increasing per capita income of the country. The 2010 Census may show a decline from the $21,587 per capita income in 2000 and the median income of $50,740.  Income questions on the 2000 Census and the American Community Survey are asked about the previous year (99 and 09). The data will be comparing one of the best economic years in our nation's history to one of the worst.

India Will Be Larger than China

The US Census Bureau has projected that India will become the most populous country in the world in 2025, surpassing China in size.  Different fertility rates is the primary reason that India will surpass China in population.  India has a fertility rate of 2.7 births per woman while the Chinese fertility rate is only 1.6, a decrease from 2.2 in 1990. The very low fertility rate in China is the result of the one child family policy, a delay in age at marriage and rapid modernization.  China’s population growth has declined to .05 percent annually while India continues to grow at a rate of  1.4 percent annually. The International Data Base  projects that China and India currently account for 37% of the world’s 6.8 billion people.

 Although fertility rates (the number of children estimated to be born over a woman’s lifetime) continue to fall worldwide, the annual number of births is still rising and projected to peak at 137 million in 2013. Very high birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in an increase of more than 75 million women in the childbearing ages (20-39) during the last decade. The fertility rate in the developing world is estimated to be 2.7 children per woman, a decline from 3.0 in 2001. As a result the world's population is increasing at more than 75 million each year.

In contrast, women in more developed countries average 1.6 births, well below the number required to replace these children’s parents. Birth numbers in the more developed world have been relatively constant in recent years because both fertility rates and the number of women at peak childbearing ages have remained fairly stable.

The United States has a fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman which is higher than other developed countries.  This is a result of higher birthrates among immigrants.  The Census Bureau estimates that the United States will have 350 million people by 2025.

     Currently, nearly half of the world’s countries or areas have fertility levels that are at or below replacement level. Most of these countries are in Europe but a number are located in Asia, including Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Thirty-two countries in the world — mostly in sub-Saharan Africa — have an estimated lifetime fertility of more than five children per woman.

The 10 most populous countries are a study in contradiction in terms of population growth.  Those countries are China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia and Japan. Japan and Russia are losing population; China and Brazil are below replacement fertility while the United States is at replacement.  Bangladesh and Indonesia have fertility rates under 3 children per woman although both countries appear to have stalled in their fertility decline.  Nigeria has a fertility rate of 5.2 children per woman, a figure that has not changed in five years.  Pakistan’s fertility is finally coming down and is just below 4 children per woman. The high fertility among these large countries ensures that world population will continue to grow for many decades, probably surpassing the current projection of 9 billion people. 

Russia:  Then and Now

In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and splintered into 15 countries. Russia, the largest of the former Soviet Union countries, has experienced dramatic changes in the health and well-being of the population.  Environmental degradation is wide spread in the country, alcoholism and smoking are major public health problems and income disparity is increasing in Russia.

The Russian population is declining due to low fertility and high mortality. In 1991 the Russian population stood at 148 million but had declined to 142 million by  2008.  The birth rate of Russia rose from its lowest point of 8.27 births per 1000 people in 1999 to a rate of 12.1 per 1000 in 2008. The fertility rate of Russia (number of children per woman) rose from its lowest point of 1.16 in 1999 to 1.49 in 2008. For comparison, the US birth rate was 14.16 per 1000 in 2007.

While the Russian birth rate is currently comparable to that of other European countries, its death rate is much higher, especially among working-age males due to a comparatively high rate of fatalities caused by heart disease and the high rates of alcoholism, smoking, HIV, and other external causes of death. Alcohol consumption has risen from 7.5 liters per person to 10.5 annually.

The Russian death rate in 2008 was 14.6 per 1000 citizens. For comparison, the US death rate in 2008 was 8.26 per 1000.  Life expectancy at birth has fallen from 67.8 in 1991 to 67.5 a small decline but no other developed country has experienced a decline in life expectancy.  In contrast all western countries continue to experience an increase in life expectancy. 

One factor for the high mortality is the increase in the number of people that the UN reports are diagnosed with a serious disease.  Despite a smaller population base almost 10 million more people have a serious disease (from 91million to 109 million).  However, there are almost 50% fewer hospitals to treat seriously ill Russians today than before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

These demographic changes will affect Russia’s ability to produce the necessary economic growth to reduce the wide spread poverty and income disparity in the country.

The Recession and Reapportionment

The Changing Winds of Congress Seats

The decennial Census results in a once a decade reallocation of political power among and within the states.  Every legislative district is redrawn based upon the new population figures collected by the 2010 Census. This results in one of the most radical peaceful redistribution of political power in the world.  This reallocation of power is driven by internal population migration and the destinations that legal and illegal migrants chose, and the number of people who chose not to relocate.

For the first half of this  decade population projections have indicated that there would be a reallocation of seats in the House of Representatives from the Northeast and Midwest to Southern and Western states reflecting the westward journey of the American people. Projections of reapportionment change are prepared by the Census Bureau on an annual basis. 

In 2005, New York and Ohio were projected to lose 2 seats each while 7 states in the Northeast and Midwest would lose one seat each ( Penn, Mass, Mich, Minn, Iowa, Mo and Ill. ) The states that were to gain in 2005 included Florida and Texas with 3 seats each , Arizona 2 seats and Nevada, Utah and Georgia gaining 1 seat each.  All of the gainers were in the South and the West.  Those states were seeing extraordinary economic growth, rapid housing development and an increasing number of immigrants going to the states.

However, the recession and the collapse of the housing market has resulted in very different international and internal migration patterns in the last two years which may result in fewer congressional changes than anticipated. Fewer immigrants are coming and many fewer people are moving from the Northeast and Midwest. Previous projections of population change assumed that people would continue to move out of sending states (Northeast-Midwest) at the same rate as in the past.  2008 data shows a halt to the exodus from the Northeast and Midwest despite the terrible job market.  Many say that the imploding housing market has made it difficult for people to move to better opportunities.

Texas and Arizona were projected to gain 4 and 2 seats; however, current projections indicate that the rapid decline in internal migration and immigration may result in Texas only gaining 3 seats and Arizona only 1.  Florida has suffered from this recession and current projections are that Florida will only gain one seat after the 2010 Census.  On the other hand New York will only lose 1 seat as a result of the 2010 Census. 

The redistricting within the states will have an equally significant impact upon the composition of Congress. The choice of newcomers about where to live within states influences the allocation of political power.  Metropolitan areas have seen dramatic increases in their populations while rural parts of New York, Pennsylvania, and California have continued to lose population in contrast to the metropolitan areas.  Legal immigrants are attracted to large metropolitan areas which means that New York, Chicago and Los Angles have countered the outflow of native born residents. 

Population tides ebb and flow.  Internal mobility is at a 60 year low and will surely increase after the recession is over.  Whether it will return to the levels of the late 90’s and early 00’s is not known. The Baby Boomers are entering retirement and leaving those age groups when mobility is highest. The changing political spectrum is driven by our population changes and the 2010 Census will document who we are and where we live… and then our political system will begin process of reallocating power to reflect those changes.