Now we are 300,000,000...
On or around October 17th, according to the Census Bureau's population clock, the number of people in the country will hit 300m, up from 200m in 1967. By as early as 2043, the bureau says, there will be 400m Americans. Such robust growth is unique among rich countries. As America adds 100m people over the next four decades, Japan and the EU are expected to lose almost 15m.
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American women today can expect to have an average of 2.1 children. That is the number needed to keep a population stable, so observers sometimes take it as a given and say that America's population growth is entirely due to immigration. This obscures the point: for every big advanced country besides America and Israel, the alternative to “replacement rate” fertility is a baby bust.
The fertility rate in the EU is 1.47—well below replacement. By 2010, deaths there are expected to start outnumbering births, so from that point immigration will account for more than all its growth. And that average hides countries that have seen an astonishing collapse in the willingness of their citizens to breed. The fertility rate in Italy and Spain is 1.28, which, without immigration, would cause the number of Spaniards and Italians to halve in 42 years.
Falling birth rates are linked to prosperity. People in very poor countries tend to have lots of babies because they expect some of them to die in infancy, and because they need help in the fields and someone to care for them in their old age. The fertility rate in [censored] and Mali, for example, is over seven children per woman.
As countries grow richer and women get educated, they have fewer children and invest more in each one. Whereas peasants in Mali cannot afford not to have kids, many Westerners fret that they cannot afford to have them. University is expensive, and if Mum (or Mom) decides to stay home, the household must forgo the salary she used to earn. Add to this the sudden halt to a life of carefree first-world hedonism, and it is no wonder that birth rates have plummeted in all rich countries.
But much less so in America. Why should this be? Religion plays a role, argues Mr Klineberg. Americans are more devout than Europeans, if church attendance is any guide, and their faith colours their worldview. Don Iloff, a spokesman for Lakewood Church (and Victoria Osteen's brother), agrees. Faith begets hope, he says, and if you have hope for the future, you are more likely to want to bring children into the world.
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Houston was 70% white in 1960, but is now a mix: 57% white (of which 42% are Hispanic), 24% black and 6% Asian. “Where you grew up is irrelevant in Houston,” says Tim Cisneros, a local architect whose mother came from Mexico. “Everyone is so busy making money they don't have time to worry about race.” Polls suggest that the picture is not quite so rosy—79% of blacks think blacks are “often” discriminated against in Houston. But 69% of Houstonians think the city's ethnic diversity will become a source of strength. It is easier to deal with a globalising world if your citizens have roots in many countries.America's future could look something like Houston's present, argues Joel Kotkin, a writer on demography. As the nation's population surges, it will become more ethnically mixed and especially more Hispanic. Houston suggests that that will be just fine. Rapid growth may cause environmental problems, but it will greatly slow the pace at which America ages. Whereas in the EU by 2050 there will be fewer than two adults of working age for every person over 65, the proportion in America will be less scary, at almost three to one. The problems of growth, says Mr Klineberg, are easier to deal with than the problems of decline.
Can the world cope with a relentlessly expanding America? Many non-Americans will shudder at the prospect, but which alternative superpower would they prefer? China? If demography is destiny, they will not have to find out what a Chinese hyperpower looks like: the fertility rate in China is only 1.7, and there are almost no immigrants.
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8031359