This is simple mathematics.
If your birthrate is below replacement rate, pretty soon your population's births will outnumber its deaths.<p>The only reason the United States hasn't seen a shrinking population (and stagnating economy) like much of Europe and Japan is due to immigration:<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/10/16631980/fertility-immigration-economics-growth-family-friendly" rel="nofollow">https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/10/16631980/fertili...</a>
I'm 33 and my spouse is 31, we just had our first child. Of our 20 or so closest white friends, there are exactly two couples with babies. Most aren't even married yet.<p>This is in NYC so I expect that we're outliers, but given that fertility starts declining significantly around 35, I've got to imagine our friend group won't even be <i>close</i> to the replacement rate. So unless we're not just outliers but extreme outliers, I've got to imagine that fertility will decline even more over the next five years or so. We're just now getting to the point where it's time for the folks who graduated during the great recession and/or who work in the gig economy to start having kids, so to whatever extent economics play a role I don't think we've hit the bottom of the trough yet.
The political implications are pretty interesting. It doesn't seem like rural areas are "replenishing" at all, thus, getting older, which seems to coincide with being generally more conservative and typically more "protective".<p>Also, rural areas don't seem to see much positive economic development these days. Thus, it's likely that the rural vote will become even more distrusting of central authority and extreme in general.<p>It sure seems like the political divide in the US will only deepen further, and be susceptible to even more external manipulation.<p>What I didn't consider previously is that the opiate epidemic may also be adding fuel to the fire.
The major demographic story of the century will be peak population. For the first time in the history of civilisation population will fall year after year instead of growing. All sorts of economic things that people take for granted will be questioned. Its much harder to fund pay-as-you-go retirement programs if the workforce size is decreasing. How much of GDP growth is dependent on population growth? You have to expect a decrease in average investment returns when populations shrink. Etc. Etc.
I love a click-bait headline and identity politics for its own sake as much as the next person but there's little mention of controlling for age or inter-state migration.<p>Of course more white people are dying in AZ, FL, and other places white people with the means tend to retire to. Of course more white people are dying than being born in places that are mostly white and young people are moving away from (rural areas).
This could just be written “The baby boom are dying”. The baby boom was always a one-off event, not a sustained change in behaviour. And given the ridiculously poor choice they’ve made, whilst we’ll undoubtedly miss those we love, collectively they will not be mourned.<p>The Baby Boom was not the greatest generation.
This phenomenon and a host of other's happening in U.S currently are the reasons why trump was elected.<p>Edit: relax people I'm black not racist what I mean to say is that the rise of China's economy and the dwindling influence of whites in the sphere of things globally is what brought trump to power
I'm white. As I watch the news I can't help but think maybe this isn't such a bad thing. All I see are white people bashing people of color, and other white people standing on the sidelines doing nothing concrete to stop it. [edited for clarity]