The US recorded the lowest rate of population growth in its history in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the US Census Bureau.
The year from July 2020 to July 2021 was also the first time since 1937 that the population of the US grew by fewer than 1 million people. Only 392,665 people were added to the count, growth of barely 0.1%.
The figures released on Tuesday would appear to indicate that although tens of millions of Americans were forced to quarantine at home in the early months of the pandemic, there was no consequential rise in the birthrate.
If anything, analysts say, the numbers were far lower than anticipated, even though the tally of births in the US has dropped every year since 2008, with the exception of 2014.
“I was expecting low growth but nothing this low,” William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution metropolitan policy program, told the Associated Press.
“It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.”
Other factors also influenced the slow growth. “We have an aging population and that means fewer women in child-bearing ages,” Frey said. “We see younger people putting off having children, and they’re going to have fewer children.”
According to the census bureau, slower population growth has been a trend partly because of decreasing fertility and net international migration, combined with increasing mortality due to the aging population.
“In other words, since the mid-2010’s, births and net international migration have been declining at the same time deaths have been increasing. The collective impact of these trends is slower population growth,” Luke Rogers, head of the census bureau’s population estimates branch, said in a press release.
The District of Columbia saw the largest percentage population decline, a 2.9% drop from 690,093 to 670,050 residents. In terms of sheer numbers, New York saw the greatest fall, by 319,020 people to 19,835,913.
Other states bucked the trend, notably Idaho, which saw a 2.9% increase in its population to 1,900,923. Utah and Montana saw the next biggest rises of 1.7% each, while Florida – which overtook New York as the nation’s third most populous state in 2014 – also featured in the top 10 with 1% growth, to 21,781,128. The figure means the sunshine state’s population swelled by almost 580 new residents every day.
