Summary: Demographic changes are the essence of social change. The composition of America’s population will change drastically during the next 50 years. We are not preparing for what is coming because we pretend nothing will happen.
(1) An equal distribution by age
Age distribution graphs were always some kind of pyramid. Ours will become a cylinder. This will be a unique event in history, with people over 60 roughly a third of the population – instead of a tiny fraction, as in pre-industrial societies. Children will be an unusually small fraction of the population. There will be fare fewer mothers (i.e., caring for young children) than ever before in history.
This new distribution of ages will radically change society’s dynamics in ways we cannot now imagine. To mention some of the big ones: fewer families, more elderly, and slower advancement up career leaders.
(2) A radically different racial/ethnic distribution
This graph from Pew Research shows the future of America. That is the most radical statement you will read today, or perhaps this year. Some react to it with emotional denial, as too scary to contemplate. Some react to it with idealistic denial, believing that it will be a wonderful peaceful multi-ethnic society – like in Zootopia
My guess: people of the future will look back at the former group with contempt because they saw the problem but did nothing. They will regard the latter group as delusional loons.
Look at Generation Z. Non-hispanic whites are half of Gen Z. That is the baseline, our inevitable baseline future based on people already born. The effects will be immense. To mention just one factor, African-Americans and Hispanics have higher crime rates than whites (see here and here).
That grossly overstates what their faction will be in the future. Open borders (i.e., high rates of immigration) combined with whites’ lower fertility rates will make them a minority sometime in the next 20 – 30 years, with their fraction of the population continuing to shrink after passing that milestone.
A large fraction of immigrants in the past decade and today have low education and skills. They flood into a nation with a surplus of such people (hence all the stories of desperate immigrants, esp. illegals, being abused by employers). They bring with them the beliefs that made their home nations so dysfunctional. When they come here, they change America as we change them. Even more so as many come from nations whose people assimilate slowly – and in numbers that result in slow assimilation (see the research here).
Lastly, we no longer have the strong mechanisms that “encouraged” assimilation in the generations before the borders were closed by FDR in the 1930s.
Conclusions
The combined effect of these factors working over the next several decades will drastically reshape America in ways we cannot predict, probably changing America beyond recognition. The changed age distribution will force changes, their nature unknowable. The massive changes in racial and ethnic distribution, boosted by immigration, will force more changes. My guess (guess!) is that America will more closely resemble Third World nations.
The combination, along with changes from normal social evolution and new technology, might destabilize America. The effects of that could be very bad. We can improve our odds by preparing, starting now.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See about immigration, about demographics, and especially these…
- Essential reading: See the hidden history of immigration into America (it ruins the narrative).
- Important: Diversity is a grand experiment. We’re the lab rats.
- The lies about immigration keeping the borders open.
- The smoke & fire of the new Sweden is our future.
- Prepare for mass migrants, the greatest challenge to America.
- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- William Lind explains how to defend against an invasion.
- Our rulers make a new people for America.
- Fast action now can solve the immigration crisis.
- The devastating economic effect of mass migration.
Three books about immigration, all well worth reading
See George Friedman’s (founder of Stratfor) prescient predictions about the American southwest in his 2009 book The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
Europe is our future. If we act quickly, we can learn and avoid their mistakes. These two books provide clear warnings.
Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
The most common mistake is to see a trend and think it will continue forever.
Just extend the line or the curve. Too easy.
When you do that, you always see disaster ahead.
Overpopulation, climate collapse, peak oil etc.
What we know is that it is wrong.
There is always the known unknowns, add the unknown unknowns and you dont know what the future brings.
Only just not that we expected.
Kaboshi,
That’s exactly not the point here. Demographic projections are based on people already born. They assume nothing other than people will age and then die. I suggest that you re-read the post.
Kaboshi,
I rewrote the last two sections to make this even clearer (although the graphs should have been sufficient to convey the message).
Be careful, you’re on the border of noticing things that are not supposed to be noticed. Your darker writings remind me of the zman blog, with a little bit of Steve sailer mixed in on occasion.
J.,
“Your darker writings …”
Sad but true. And I used to have such a naive chippy optimism! Now here’s what I write:
I see a pattern here…
Kaboshi, you are confusing a trend with unchecked feedbacks among other issues. One can generate graphs, such as LK presented, with statistics based on presently accepted and well founded data, a fine example of which is the graphs shown years ago that indicated the ratio of people accepting social security benefits to employees/employers paying into the SSI system.
Chad,
That’s an important point!
Of course, these are even more simple forecast: snapshots of demographic pictures. They predict the future quite accurately, assuming no change in how people live or die. But they do not include the effects of population flows: fertility and immigration.
“They bring with them the beliefs that made their home nations so dysfunctional.”
They’re bringing CIA-backed death squads, enormous multinational corporations, the IMF, and the World Bank with them?
bob,
If you believe that’s what makes the Third World what it is, around the world, then there’s not much basis for conversation.
This is the nature of our world. Anti-vaxers, climate change deniers, RussiaGaters, gun nuts — all immune to facts or logic. The world just has to move on without them.
So what do you think the reason is?
Bob,
“So what do you think the reason is?”
Take a look at western history. Pretty much a horror show, century by century, from the Fall of Rome (~476 AD) to 1815. Why does anyone expect other peoples to jump in a few generations from the iron age (or earlier) to 21st-century stable democracies? Esp those (fortunately a small fraction) who had their introduction to the modern age accompanied by massive and destabilizing demographic flows – such as western hemisphere’s transfer of slaves to Africa and colonial immigration. Even after decolonization, the result was a mess. (Note that slavery has been a core part of cultures in most of Africa for millennia, as it was in Europe).
“CIA-backed death squads” were a factor in a tiny number of failed states. I doubt that “enormous multinational corporations, the IMF, and the World Bank” had a net negative effect – despite heavy-breathing about them by the Left. Perhaps in a better world (ie, not Earth) they could have had a much better effect. They introduced capital and methods that those societies lacked. Indigenous political and social structures often squandered that capital and ignored (or botched implementation of) the methods, but there is little that the west could have done to prevent that. Other than continued colonial control (which probably would not have been a net benefit in most of them).
Most of the worst cases of failed states had the least inimical intervention by the West. For example, central Africa (coast to coast). Some of them are recovering, but the suffering and wars since decolonization have been immense.
For another perspective, most of Asia (esp East Asia) had the same institutional relations with the west (eg, corps, WB, IMF) – yet have become fantastic success stories after decolonization. They haven’t become heaven, which is often the standard of success used by the Left.
A large part of Asia’s success has been because of strong states and protectionist economic policies that saw them through their industrialization periods, which is the same way Europe and the USA industrialized too. Latin America never really had that, and it’s only gotten worse as “Washington consensus” financial reforms (austerity, privatization, free trade, etc.) have been foisted upon them. We and European countries are beginning to feel the effects of such “reforms” too, just that under-developed countries in Latin America and Africa had much less to lose than we did.
Of course, many of Latin America’s woes are due to historical under-development and the bad luck of being several iron age civilizations suddenly confronted with strange disease-bearing, gun-toting men from across the ocean, as you noted…but you can’t deny that meddling in Latin America, whether by the US government itself or by US-based companies, has been a national pastime since the Monroe Doctrine was declared. The term “banana republic” was coined to describe places like Guatemala and Honduras that we reduced to puppet states for US companies. Especially during the Cold War, the mildest left-wing economic reform could expect to be met with death squads and military coups, underwritten by our intelligence apparatus. Even trying to organize a union in one of these countries often meant murder by thugs hired by the likes of United Fruit or Coca Cola.
I constantly see immigration hawks trying to couch their argument in terms of protecting American workers or clash-of-civilizations nonsense, and saying we need to close the border, build the wall, etc…I see almost none of them actually look at the roots of the immigration problem and proposing that we stop our foreign meddling (like the ongoing one in Venezuela), rethink our “war on drugs” policies, or offer foreign aid to our neighbors that isn’t a backdoor to keeping them impoverished and exploitable via our trade policies.
Bob,
Your statements are largely false. States in other areas have become quite dysfunctional, despite having protectionist trade regimes and no “cia-backed death squads”. Many became successful with high levels of participation of “massive multinational corporations, the IMF, and WB.”
You are just picking factoids to tell stories, and ignoring both history and the large literature of developmental Econ and Pol Science.
To believe US help will make Latin Am and Africa fine places from which people won’t want to immigrate is delusional. There is near-zero evidence for belief that we have that much influence.
Ditto, foreign aid – which has been tried and proven to have little effect on dysfunctional states.
You have ignored everything I said. As I said, this is like talking with anti-vaxers, climate science deniers (both Left and Right), gun nuts, etc.
Belief that the many dysfunctional nations are all victims of the West is a political fiction. That’s not to say we’re angels, but we have not had such large effects on so many nations.
The things you mention have had negative effects, but your political bias blinds you to the things we have done that help. The world does not consist of angels and devils.
The people of the future will be too busy fighting each other over the scraps of the republic that our ancestors built to give much attention to what we think.
M Blanc,
“to give much attention to what we think.”
I don’t know to what you are replying. Let’s replay what the post said.
Massive immigration doesn’t just happen. People of the future will care about what we do about it, as that will shape their lives. People seldom care what those of the past thought, no matter how good or bad the results.
Graying of the Great powers
https://www.google.com/search?q=graying+of+the+great+powers&oq=graying+of+the+great+powers&aqs=chrome..69i57.6350j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Demographic Winter
Predicted this years ago.
I have three children, now 19, 13 and 11, when I said we need more children, many people would say either racist or there will be no jobs, black friends who had three kids would have those same whites fawning all over their kids.
At 58 average age, it is too late to breed or do anything much, but watch the process. Once the birth rate drops below 1.5 it has never got back up again, (according to Graying of the Great Powers authors, both demographers).
We listened to the 1970’s doom of the planet, consume and borrow, while India, Pakistan, and much of South America doubled their populations, now they want to move to a Western Country. China got rich on our de-industrialisation and is expanding in the South Sea.
I think we will see the migration that happened with the fall of Rome, I fear it may get ugly, for us all.
The Mandibles is a good lighter, but informed read around this issue, as well as this website. I appreciate the effort Larry takes.
Just a guy,
The key thing to remember about doomsters is that while they are not always wrong, that’s the smart way to bet. They were delusional about our certain doom from overpopulation (the cure had appeared a decade earlier). Their current hysteria about underpopulation is not just wrong. It’s quite mad.
We are only a few years away from anti-aging therapies becoming available. Next year I can get my thymus rejuvenated and largely turn back the clock on my immune system. It is quite likely that people will be living extremely long and healthy lives later in this century. Our age pyramid will be turned upside down with most people eventually being healthy centenarians. This will likely create a rather conservative society, at least by current standards. Less youth to cause crime and call for revolution. It will indeed be a different world, but not necessarily bad if we can nip some issues in the bud now.
Martin,
“We are only a few years away from anti-aging therapies becoming available.”
Your optimism is commendable, but that is a guess. There are drugs being tested for their anti-aging effects. Only god knows if they will work. Others are in the lab.
The history of announced miracle cures provides a cautionary note. Remember interferon, the miracle cure for cancer? Thirty years later, nope (see the history here).
For professionals’ look at the pipeline, see “Anti-Aging Drugs – Prospect of Longer Life?” in Current Medicinal Chemistry (2018). To see the hype, exuberant and unrestrained by experience, see “Old Age Is Over“, the “Longevity Issue” of MIT Technology Review, Sept/Oct 2019. MIT R. is this generation’s Popular Mechanics. I doubt its forecasts will read better in 50 years than PM’s from 1950 do today.
More generally, each generation goes bonkers about the short-term prospect of some kind of tech. In the 1960s it was space. By 2000 we were to have colonies on Mars! In our time, we have a host of exciting things to over-estimate. Time will tell.