Everyone Has to Pay When America Gets Too Old
Population stability was never something the U.S. had to worry about, but now it needs a plan.
Fewer babies to kiss.
Photographer: Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. needs a national population strategy. Falling immigration is combining with a decline in fertility to put us in danger of joining the club of Europe and East Asia, where people are wealthy on paper but still feel squeezed by the need to support an increasing number of elders.
The idea of population policy will seem alien to many Americans. But that’s just because we were so lucky for so long. The U.S. combined unusually robust fertility for a rich country with sustained high levels of immigration. But the first of those advantages is evaporating quickly, and the second is under threat.