America is graying, which could lead to Social Security going broke faster than previously expected. It now “has fewer children now than it did 10 years ago. That’s not in terms of percentages but raw numbers. New Census Bureau data released on Thursday show how…America has more people in their 60s than we have under age 10,” notes Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner.
According to the Census Bureau, “In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18, down 1.4% from 74.2 million in 2010. The biggest decline was among the under-5 age group, whose share of the population dropped by 8.9% or 1.8 million.” Every year, there are fewer and fewer kids in America.
Here is an illustration from the Census Bureau:
The biggest age cohort is people aged 20 to 24, born in the last period when the average woman was still expected to have at least two kids in her lifetime. After that, there are slightly fewer people in the 15-19 age cohort, and then even fewer people from ages of 10 to 14. Below that, the cohorts shrink even faster, with kids under age 5 being a smaller group than any age group under age 65.
America now has 39.5 million people in their 60s, compared to only 38.5 million kids under age 10.
Carney observes that America “is far below the 2.1 replacement level, and that birthrate (called the total fertility rate) has been falling since the Great Recession. The result is closing schools and a culture that is increasingly unaccustomed to seeing children. All of these changes, I believe, will fuel a further birthrate collapse, driving the U.S. down toward Korea-level birthrate.” In South Korea, the average woman has only 0.84 children, which is expected to cause a collapse in that country’s population, unless it permits large-scale immigration from poorer Asian countries.
