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« Back to Demographics- Continuity or Change? main page    Transcript for: Demographics- Continuity or Change?In 1790, the year that the first census was taken the population was 4-million. By 2000, that number had risen to 300-million, a 75-hundred percent increase. A question that has fascinated social scientists over the years is whether American society is characterized best by continuity or change. A look at recent data suggests an answer. Joining us are Joseph Chamie, Research Director of the Center for Migration Studies and former Director of the United National Population Division. And Gordon Green, former Chief of the Government’s Division at the US Census Bureau.The topic before the house – American demographic trends, continuity or change? This week on Think Tank. BEN WATTENBERG: Joe Chamie, welcome back to Think Tank. Gordon Green, collgue at the American Enterprise Institute. Welcome both to Think Tank. Let’s cut right to the chase. What has been happening to birth, fertility rates and the size of the American population? And let’s also look at the outyears of 2025, 2050, year 2000 (SIC). JOSEPH CHAMIE: The U.S. population, Ben, is going through a process that most developed countries have gone through and most developing countries are going through, enormous demographic transition from high rates of births and deaths to low-- rates of births and deaths. And this has become most pronounced in the 20th century for the U.S. It-- went from a relatively high fertility-- high mortality rates in the 18th century-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: --and then-- and-- and then-- BEN WATTENBERG: At-- at the first-- at the time of the first census in 1790, we had almost eight children per woman. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Very large number of children. BEN WATTENBERG: And-- and by 1900, it was about four children per woman and why don’t you pick it up from there? JOSEPH CHAMIE: To have families now of two or three children, that’s sort of the mean. Fertility rate in the U.S. is two. We’re a country now of a little more than 300 million and we’re projected to be, by mid-century, at least 400 million by the middle of this century. And perhaps-- by the end of the 21st century approaching 600 million, if you follow some-- some projections. BEN WATTENBERG: So it is-- with the medium projection-- we are gonna go-- we’re gonna double in size in the 21st century. JOSEPH CHAMIE: According to-- BEN WATTENBERG: Give-- give or take a-- (OVERTALK) JOSEPH CHAMIE: Yes. A lot of that depends on immigration. The U.S. is an exception in terms of fertility rate. Because most of the European countries, Japan, South Korea, they’re below the replacement level on average. BEN WATTENBERG: Why don’t you explain that notion of the-- replacement level? JOSEPH CHAMIE: The replacement level for-- the nation or a family are two children and most school kids know that. So if you-- have-- a mother and a father and they have one child-- you’ve cut the-- replacement in half. And in Europe right now, the average is for the European is about 1.5 and the U.S. it’s at two approximately. And we have been there for awhile. So the U.S. has relatively high fertility compared to the other developed countries. But we’re going through this transition-- globally and the U.S. is an outlier in terms of the developed world. We continue to grow and a good portion of this is because of immigration. We have at least-- 40 percent of the current growth due to immigration and in the future, if you make a projection-- you can assume that something on the order of 80 percent of the future growth of America is dependent on immigration. Of course, the immigrants themselves and their offspring. BEN WATTENBERG: Gordon, can you give us a sense of what Americans have been earning and are earning now? What does that graph look like? GORDON GREENE: Well, it depends on whether you’re looking at household income or family income. I think median family income is up around $60,000 now. The median is the point-- the value that divides the distribution in half. BEN WATTENBERG: Yeah. And-- and this-- we’re talking here in always constant dollars. And if not it’s wash-- the inflation’s washed out. GORDON GREENE: When you-- when you make comparisons over time you use constant dollars to take the effect of inflation out. And when you make that comparison you find that-- income is up over time if you go look back over the past, say, 40 years-- it’s up quite significantly. There are p-- BEN WATTENBERG: Like roughly speaking from what to what? GORDON GREENE: Oh, for family income I guess, if you go back 40 years ago and you make the infla-- adjustment for inflation maybe from 45,000 let’s say up to $60,000 for the average family. And you have your-- fluctuations during recessions of course. But-- if you look at a figure like per capita income, which is the income for every man, woman and child, that’s up by considerably more. The per capita income-- BEN WATTENBERG: And-- and-- and that would tend to be the more relevant piece of-- GORDON GREENE: In a way it is. Because what it does is control-- for household size, which, as you know, has been shrinking over time. And if you look at the per capita figure-- it’s up over $25,000-- per person now and if you compare that over the past 30 or 40 years, in effect it’s doubled. So it shows a-- a steeper rate of increase than if you look at-- BEN WATTENBERG: So you’ve had about 100 percent increase in real wealth. Let me ask you about poverty. There’s so much talk that we have a lot of poverty in America. That it’s not going down. That it’s stubborn. And yet you have been working with some numbers that show something quite different. I wondered and the census has acknowledged them-- that kind of data. I wonder if you could describe how you see the-- the line? GORDON GREENE: Well, if you look at the official measure of poverty, which is based on money income only, I think the census bureau reported that it was 12.3 percent. BEN WATTENBERG: Which was down a little-- (OVERTALK) GORDON GREENE: Down a little. Down 3/10ths of a percentage point from 2005. But if you compare that measure back-- goin’ back to 1968, I believe it was about 12.8 percent at the time. So you say, 'We really haven’t made any improvement, 12.8 versus 12.3.' But a-- a problem is the way that poverty is measured officially. If you take a broader measure and you count, first of all, you wanna count the taxes that-- people pay. Because they’re not available for spending. But you also want to count the various types of non-cash benefits that people receive. BEN WATTENBERG: For-- for example-- GORDON GREENE: Whether it’s food stamps-- or public housing or-- school lunches or whatever. They’re not included in the official measure. BEN WATTENBERG: Or-- or healthcare. (OVERTALK) GORDON GREENE: And healthcare. And the pe-- sometimes that’s controversial about whether to include-- insurance values of Medicare and Medicaid. But obviously they are the largest programs. The point I want to make, the Census Bureau has done a lot of good work on measuring these non-cash benefits, on counting taxes, on usin’ an-- an improved price index. And-- I believe they reported that the poverty rate-- for 2005, I believe, instead of 12.6 percent, would be 8.2 percent if you use the-- the various-- adjustments I’ve mentioned. And if you go one step further and you count the income of cohabiters, there are many unmarried partners living together who have access to the other person’s income. But it’s not counted officially because-- poverty is-- it’s based on a family-- of, you know, two or more people related by blood, marriage or adoption. And so you’re not picking up these cohabiters. If you make all the various adjustments, if you make all the various adjustments-- not just the one the Census Bureau has made-- but the additional ones I mentioned, you get down around in the 5½ to 6 percent range. But-- BEN WATTENBERG: And there is something else that has-- been a contributory factor. As we have taken in a lot of-- particularly illegal immigrants who work at, to start, at menial jobs. They pull down the income distribution substantially. I mean, if you get a million-- we have about a million and 3/4 immigrants or something coming in each year. Almost half of them are illegals. Most of those are working at low skill jobs. So they pull down the income distribution. On the other hand, after they’ve been here five years or ten years or their kids, they are moving up the thing. So it tends to make-- make that poverty rate very sticky. But if you took the poverty rates of people who have been here ten or 15 years, you would see a sharp decline. GORDON GREENE: Right. And as you look back over time—these, what we call compositional changes, whether it’s from emigrants or whether it’s from-- more families headed by women because of increases in divorce and separation. As a group becomes a larger percentage of the total population. If that group has a higher than average poverty rate, it’s gonna have an effect on the overall measure that you’ve done. JOSEPH CHAMIE: And it’s also important-- in addition to the total number, is how it divides up among ethnic and other cultural groups. You do not want it to be concentrated in one particular group. That’s a very dangerous situation. You-- you want people to have equal chances and you want to try to have this uniform. But to have a poverty rate that’s declining for the nation as a whole that going up for a particular group-- is not a very good social situation to have. BEN WATTENBERG: But that is not happening. I mean-- poverty relates to closely to education and the numbers we’ve been looking at show a steady march of people going, graduating from high school. I mean, high school graduation is now up in the 90 percentile, 95 percentile. JOSEPH CHAMIE: My point is, the average may show relatively high, but you have to be very careful it doesn’t concentrate on particular groups. And right now we have a situation, as Gordon knows right-- quite well, that the boys are falling behind the girls. And the majority of the OACD countries the-- majority of students in the universities are women. BEN WATTENBERG: Now is that bad or good? JOSEPH CHAMIE: Well, I think you want-- BEN WATTENBERG: I mean, it-- it compensates for so many decades or centuries of the maleducation of women. I mean-- look, Joe, let’s just think this through. Either more women are gonna graduate or more men are gonna graduate. Right? Now, it’s got to be basically one or the other. JOSEPH CHAMIE: When the population’s divided about half and half what-- you’d expect it to sort of gravitate around 50 percent. What we’re seeing is 60 percent, 70 percent of the women are graduating and-- and a very small proportion of the men. BEN WATTENBERG: Yeah, well, hold on. W-- we have had a cross-over. It used to be the majority of people-- in college were men. Now the majority of people in college are women. GORDON GREENE: That’s correct. BEN WATTENBERG: All right. Now-- so you have that continuity-- again, continuity, not change. Women in the workforce. And-- and-- getting-- better education. One of the reasons that the labor force participation of men is going down is that they too are going into higher education at greater rates. Now, the fact that women are doing that more than men doesn’t mean that men, the-- the lines of men graduating high school and going onto college is up. The corresponding line for women is up even higher. But it’s up for both. Is that right? GORDON GREENE: Yes. It is. But women have really made significant strides in education, in comin’ into the labor market. BEN WATTENBERG: Absolute-- GORDON GREENE: Not just coming into the labor market, but working continuously. Many will have a child and drop out for a-- a month or two, but come back. So they have that continuity of work experience that really leads to higher levels of income later on. And this is-- BEN WATTENBERG: And-- and-- and that’s the good news. GORDON GREENE: That’s the good news. BEN WATTENBERG: I mean, as far as I’m concerned. GORDON GREENE: And it’s-- you know, it’s one of the really-- interesting things-- with the interesting-- with the income statistics. Because, you know, we-- everyone talks about the increase in divorce and separation and you end up with more female household or families that have these high poverty rates. At the same time, you have this phenomenon we’re talking about. Women going into the labor force, becoming more highly educated, stayin’ in the labor force, and because of something that we call—“assortative mating.” The people with similar levels of education-- BEN WATTENBERG: What-- GORDON GREENE: --tend to marry. BEN WATTENBERG: --what is the phrase? GORDON GREENE: “Assortative mating.” That-- people with s- BEN WATTENBERG: That-- That’s a good social science. GORDON GREENE: P-- people with similar levels of-- BEN WATTENBERG: W-- we-- we’ve got to spell that out. Go ahead, yeah. GORDON GREENE: People with similar levels of education tend to marry. So you get-- a husband/wife family with Bo-- with a highly educated husband and wife both working year around full time, and you get a-- quite a high income family. Tends to cluster at the upper range of the income distribution. And so these are the kinds of social forces that have been-- tugging at the income distribution figures that we look at. And over time, they’re-- these are quite significant changes. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Right. And these are remarkable social economic/cultural changes for these societies. America, Europe, Japan. BEN WATTENBERG: Well, let’s just talk about America. I think every one of the trends we’ve talked about is a continuation rather than a change, with the possible exception of immigration. More education, more income. We could add in more l-- more living space. There are some tricks and cuts and passes, but essentially we’re living in a very revolutionary age. I mean, where women are goin’ to work and everything else. But essentially those directionally we’re seeing continuity rather than change. JOSEPH CHAMIE: There are major forces operating in this direction. One is urbanization. When people move to cities, smaller living quarters, more emphasis on education, better facilities, lower mortality, less strenuous work. Women can participate in office work, as opposed to heavy, heavy agricultural work. They can participate actively in the society. So urbanization is an enormous factor and it’s happening not only at-- at-- BEN WATTENBERG: But-- but the-- wait-- wait. I think-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: --the U.S., but-- BEN WATTENBERG: --the-- National Association of Housing or something have some indices of the number of square feet that an individual lives in. And this is partly due to reduced household size. Even in cities we are living in more spacious quarters than we used to. Because it’s-- it’s a function of wealth. I mean-- GORDON GREENE: It’s average square footage has gone up pretty significantly. BEN WATTENBERG: Yeah. Quite significantly. JOSEPH CHAMIE: It depends what period you’re comparing. If you compare it to 1800s and you’re living on a farm, you have a lot of space to-- to-- to move around. BEN WATTENBERG: But compare-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: But if you’re in the city-- BEN WATTENBERG: --com-- compare urban to urban. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Yes. BEN WATTENBERG: --and it’s gone up. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Well, if you move to an urban area, if you move to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago. And you move to the center of the city, you can’t have five children easily. It’s very, very costly. BEN WATTENBERG: N-- No. That’s right. But-- and one reason for the differential between American fertility rates and European or Japanese, is that we tend-- we have a majority of people now living in the suburbs. And one of the few things that I have seen not reflected yet in the data, but just in-- saw a piece in the 'Washington Post' the other day. Loudon County, Virginia, which is exurban in-- in-- in-- in Virginia, they are seeing people move-- we live in-- in ranch houses rather than in-- in apartments. If you wanna have three or four or five children and you have the money, you can do it. They are talking about developments in Loudon County where people are having on average 3½, four, 4½ even five children and these are families of-- working man and a previously working wo-- woman who are deciding that one of the great things to do in life is have a family. If you have the income and you have housing space, you have a dish washer, you have air conditioning, you have a dryer, you have two cars. If you want to do it, if that’s the value system you have, you can do it. GORDON GREENE: And Ben, I think as you were saying-- from a variety of statistics. There has been tremendous progress in this country, tremendous economic progress. But the point that I think Joe was makin’ earlier, how to get the message across to everybody of how to do it. And I-- I would just underscore-- BEN WATTENBERG: Now that’s a real problem-- (OVERTALK) GORDON GREENE: --the importance of education. This is the key. Because it opens the doors. It enables people to get into the better paying jobs. And what we see in our economy is that there’s an increasing return to education and to skill, because of computer-- computers and technology. And so the-- the challenge is to get the message to everybody that this is the way you need to succeed. And I-- I think education’s front and center. JOSEPH CHAMIE: The other thing that’s operating in addition these very, very large demographic changes, is the-- increased-- longevity and the aging of the-- of the society. That has an enormous impact on household. On-- on the-- BEN WATTENBERG: And-- and again that’s a continuity change over the last 40 years getting older and older and older and older. The baby boom maturing. The birth rates staying moderately low. (OVERTALK) GORDON GREENE: Well, life expectancy has gone up significantly. But what we’re gonna-- BEN WATTENBERG: And life expectancy just keeps going up. GORDON GREENE: --but what we’re gonna see in the future is this-- the effect of the baby boom generation, that 75 million people born in the 20 years after World War II, as they age and with life expectancy increasing, they’re gonna be tremendous demands on Social Security-- on Medicare and so-- BEN WATTENBERG: Yeah. But y-- you know, there’s two things we’ve got to consider about that. Yes, that’s true. There’s this overhang of social services because of the-- the-- aging of the population. But it’s a very funny kind of value system where you say, 'Gee, people are living longer, healthier lives, and that’s a problem.' GORDON GREENE: No. These are good things. Don’t get me wrong. (OVERTALK) JOSEPH CHAMIE: I-- I-- I’ve always said it’s success. Success. BEN WATTENBERG: It’s success and side effects, the-- the problems that come with success, not failure. JOSEPH CHAMIE: These are not problems as such. These require adjustments. BEN WATTENBERG: Exactly right. And-- and-- GORDON GREENE: And the key is to adjust soon enough so that you can deal adequately-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: Absolutely. GORDON GREENE: --with the situation. BEN WATTENBERG: And there’s one other thing. With not a whole lot of fanfare-- ten/15 years ago, the Congress passed a law that you no longer get penalized for working after age 65. You used to deduct your Social Security. Now you say you get your social-- when I turn 65 I got a check for 2½ years of-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: You don’t look 65 Ben. BEN WATTENBERG: I’m not 65. I was lying (LAUGHS). The-- the-- so today-- I’m-- I’m over 65. I’m even over 70. I get Social Security even though I’m working. And I and a lot of other we call ourselves senior citizens love the work they do. So-- and as long as I work I may be getting social security, but I am paying taxes in. So that changes this whole dynamic. Yeah, there are people who are gonna need social services. But there are a lot of people in their seventies and even in their eighties who are working, contributing into the FISC (PH). (OVERTALK) JOSEPH CHAMIE: That’s right. And if you look at by-- occupation-- most of the academics, when I give a lecture to them and say, 'People have to work beyond 65, maybe beyond 70. None of them complained. None of them sort of bat an eyelash. Because they say they can work until they’re 80. But there are some exceptions. People who work in trades-- bricklayers-- plumbers and other things, waitresses. The longevity does have a-- have some consequences that we need adjustments. I want to talk about something else. We mentioned earlier it-- to some people it’s very scary numbers. You go from 300 million to 600 million people in 100 years. Holy smokes. What-- what kind of country is that gonna be? BEN WATTENBERG: First we started out at four million and we went to 300 million in 200 years. That’s a 7,500 percent increase, not just a 100 percent increase. And we did pretty well. So it’s a large, absolutely number. It’s not a large relative number. Secondly, I just flew from Washington to Portland, Oregon. And, you know, it’s that old phrase, flyover country. You get out of the coast, the three coasts-- where 80 percent of our people live within 50-- 50 miles of a coastline. Even 50 miles out of Washington you are into-- you don’t-- it’s very hard to see people. You see a farm house and then you get to city of Saint Louis, Chicago. It-- it is still a vastly underpopulated land. Well, people say, 'Yeah, but you can’t live there.' The fact of the matter is that until recently people lived there.' Th-- this is where the dear hearts and gentle people of America lived, in those small towns. JOSEPH CHAMIE: People have to keep in mind, Ben, how large the country is. If you took the entire world’s population and put it in the United States, what do you think the density would be? Of course, it’s gonna be higher than it is today. I mean, we-- today we’re about 32 people per square kilometer. If you put all the Mexicans in we’d be around 42 and if you put all the Latin American countries in, we’d be less than 100 around 92, which is less than France. But if you brought the entire world’s population of 6.7 billion people and you settled them in America it’s density would be around six 600-- 700 people per square kilometer depending on how you run it. BEN WATTENBERG: Which is about what the Europeans are. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Yes. Some countries are approaching that. Netherlands around 400. But if you keep in mind, Bangladesh’s density is 1,100 people per square kilometer. (OVERTALK) BEN WATTENBERG: And-- and-- and the fact is that density does not yield poverty. I-- I mean, you go to Manhattan to the east side of Manhattan and it’s ex-- it’s more dense than Bangladesh. People live up. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Yes. BEN WATTENBERG: They are not poor people. (OVERTALK) JOSEPH CHAMIE: So the point is the country-- BEN WATTENBERG: Donald Trump is not poor. JOSEPH CHAMIE: --country’s enormously large. The population, 300 million-- is a large-- population, but it’s not the largest in the world by a long stretch of the imagination. China has about a billion more people than we do. And-- India has about 800 million more people than we do. So-- it’s a large population. But we’re gonna still have a lot of growth. There’s no question. BEN WATTENBERG: I wanna make one last point, which I find very interesting. The big debate in America today about immigration is they say-- look at all the immigration from the Hispanic countries. Well, you know, there are-- about 30 Hispanic countries, 25/30. Nobody went around saying, 'Look at the eastern European edu--' I mean, there were ten or 15 countries with, I think, a larger proportion-- of the total immigration for 20, 30, 40 years. So-- this Latin immigration, it doesn’t frighten me at all. I mean, it’s-- (OVERTALK) JOSEPH CHAMIE: I think, Ben, it’s important to differentiate-- BEN WATTENBERG: Educated, noneducated. JOSEPH CHAMIE: What the issues are here. I find that the-- the debate of immigration is very muddled. Americans are very welcoming. The ones that are objecting, many of them, are objecting to the illegal immigration. BEN WATTENBERG: I-- I understand. JOSEPH CHAMIE: And there’s not a single elected official who has come out explicitly and said, 'I’m in favor of illegal immigration.' No one is. BEN WATTENBERG: Yeah. But-- but-- but-- but-- but-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: But what happens is we have to differentiate-- BEN WATTENBERG: --but they refuse to pass a law that would’ve made it much more difficult to employer sanctions, to tougher employer sanctions, to curtail that. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Well, there’s been a-- BEN WATTENBERG: That was the left and the right. The-- JOSEPH CHAMIE: --disappointment-- BEN WATTENBERG: --ganging up on the center. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Yeah. There’s a large disappointment and a gap. The public generally has indicated they want. Less, immigration. The elites have indicated they want more immigration. The-- private sector benefits by having this immigration. It isn’t a matter of Americans being against immigration. The frustration comes often is that the government has not been able to explain to them that these flows that people are coming into the country authorized, many of them we’ve tolerated for ten to 20 years. And that’s where the frustration comes in. BEN WATTENBERG: And-- and-- and there is no particular evidence that those groups do not assimilate over time. JOSEPH CHAMIE: Just the opposite. Our research, we’re finding research by a third generation. There’s concern that the children coming from Mexico, Central America and so on, won’t speak Spanish. That they’re lose their Spanish. BEN WATTENBERG: That they do lose their Spanish. (OVERTALK) JOSEPH CHAMIE: There’s concern that they’re losing the Spanish by the third generation. BEN WATTENBERG: Absolutely. They’re becoming Americans. JOSEPH CHAMIE: I-- I’m very optimistic that the Mexicans who’ve come to this country will do just as well as the Italians, the Irish, and every other group that’s come in. And based on the data that we’ve seen right now, they’re doing extremely well and-- economically and also socially in the assimilation. BEN WATTENBERG: I like to end programs-- where the last guest says something I agree with. So thank you very much Joe Chamie. Thank you very much Gordon Green. And thank you. Please remember to send us your comments via email. We think it makes our program better. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. 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