From New Geography, August 18:
As we previously reported, US total fertility rates have dropped markedly since 2010. The total fertility rate (TFR) is “the expected number of lifetime births per woman women given current birth rates by age.” Generally, the TFR needs to be at least 2.10 for a society to maintain its population.
Few of the nation’s 56 major metropolitan areas (more than 1,000,000 population) have retained TFRs above replacement rate based on data from the American Community Survey: 2016 to 2020 (Table). This is more than a measurement of pandemic effects and includes less than one year of the pandemic. The mid-point of this data is 2018.
While TFR data is available from the Centers for Disease Control at the state and national level, there little or no readily available data at the metropolitan, county or municipality level. But there is sufficient ACS data to perform the calculations. The TFR calculation method, used to derive the metropolitan area data, is described in this government of Singapore page. The average TFR among the 56 major metropolitan areas was 1.785 over the 2016 to 2020 period.
Major Metropolitan Areas with the Highest TFRs
Among the 15 major metropolitan areas with the highest total fertility rates, seven are located in the South and five in the Midwest. Three are located in the west and none are located in the Northeast The highest ranking major metro in the north east is Buffalo, with a TFR of 1.82. Pittsburgh ranks 25th, at 1.80.
(Figure 1)....*****.... Only three of the largest metropolitan areas have TFRs at or above the population replacement rate.Jacksonville is the highest with a rate of 2.19 children per women of childbearing years.Tulsa with a TFR of 2.12 has the second highest total fertility rate. Honolulu ranks third with a TFR of 2.10.
The other 53 major metropolitan areas have total fertility rates at lower than replacement rate.
Fresno, one of the three recent additions to the list of major metropolitan areas (the others being Tulsa and Honolulu) ranked number four, with a TFR of 1.99.
Ten other major metros had TFRs of at least 1.90. This includes, in order, Grand Rapids, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Houston, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Salt Lake City, Detroit, Dallas Fort Worth, Columbus, and Birmingham.Salt Lake City’s 11th ranking may be surprising, located in the state of Utah, which has often had the highest TFR in the nation.
Only two of the nation’s nine metropolitan areas with more than 5 million residentsare ranked in the top 15--- Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Major Metropolitan Areas with the Lowest TFRs....
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Also at New Geography, August 21:
The Unexpected Future
We are entering an unanticipated reality—an era of slow population growth and, increasingly, demographic decline that will shape our future in profound and unpredictable ways. Globally, last year’s total population growth was the smallest in a half-century, and by 2050, some 61 countries are expected to see population declines while the world’s population is due to peak sometime later this century.
This kind of long-term global demographic stagnation has not been seen since the Middle Ages. World population has been growing for centuries, but the last century has dwarfed previous rises. About 75 percent of the world’s population growth has occurred in the last hundred years, more than 50 percent since 1970. But now, population growth rates are dropping, especially in more developed nations, according to the United Nations (all subsequent references to UN research in this essay are drawn from these data).
It’s not a matter of if but when global populations will start to decline. Under the UN’s medium variant projection, the world’s population will peak in 2086, while under the low variant, the peak will occur in 2053, and by 2100, the population will be about a billion below today’s level. Demographer Wolfgang Lutz and colleagues project a global population of between 8.8 and 9.0 billion by 2050 falling to between 8.2 and 8.7 billion by 2100. The projected declines are concentrated in countries with high fertility rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, we will inhabit a rapidly aging planet. In 1970, the median world age was 21.5 years. By 2020, it had increased to 30.9 years, and the UN projects that it will be 41.9 years in 2100.
We are well past the time when we need to concern ourselves with Paul Ehrlich’s long-standing prophecy that humanity will “breed ourselves to extinction.” On the contrary, we need to worry about the potential ill-effects of depopulation, including a declining workforce, torpid economic growth, and brewing generational conflict between a generally prosperous older generation and their more hard-pressed successors. The preponderance of low fertility in wealthier countries also presages a growing conflict between the child-poor wealthy countries and the child-rich poor countries.
The shrinking of the rich world...
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