Oops, We Did It Again

by Mark Powell,
Secretary, Vermonters for Sustainable Population

At the end of last year, the Census Bureau released preliminary data from the 2010 Census. As an environmentalist I should have been comforted to learn that U.S. population growth had slowed down; there was just one little problem. I recently published a guest editorial in the Times Argus entitled, “Our Population is Growing Too Fast,” which began, “In the past twenty years, the U.S. population has grown faster than ever before . . .” You can imagine that I was somewhat perplexed by the discrepancy between my own characterization of U.S. population growth and the prevailing media sound bites in the wake of the Census results. How could I come to such a dramatically different conclusion? A closer look shows that the Census Bureau’s characterization of the data masks the largest demographic surge in any developed country’s history.

The last twenty years have exceeded the rapid expansion of the U.S. population during the baby boom, which currently dominates discussions surrounding budget shortfalls, growing entitlement burdens and generational imbalances. Now, the baby boom has been superseded by a new boom; a millennium boom, driven primarily by immigration rather than fertility rates. This shift is drastically altering America’s future and makes current challenges even more imposing.

The baby boom presented a unique challenge because of the sharp increase in the numbers of Americans within a narrow age range. Since the current boom is distributed across a broader age range, the millennium boom invokes very different challenges. At the same time, however, some of the people who have immigrated to our country in the past twenty years are baby boomers themselves, adding to the generational imbalances that threaten to bankrupt Social Security and Medicare. And there is another very important contrast between the two booms. During the baby boom the American economy had 18 years to prepare before competition for jobs began. In the millennium boom, most new arrivals are already of working age.

The Census Bureau has deployed remarkably soothing statistical talking points that do not fit the reality of America’s current demographic trajectory. Their statements and publications offer up uneventful news nuggets that consistently emphasize a trend of slowing U.S. population growth. To date, the only decades that have exceeded 2000-2010[1] in numerical population growth were the previous decades of the 1990s and the 1950s, the height of the baby boom. In the 1950s the United States added 28.4 million people, barely superseding the 27.5 million estimated increases of the aughts[2]. Some have challenged these results, claiming that certain groups were undercounted, but officially, the aughts have seen the third largest decadal growth, not just in America, but in the history of the industrial world, and that growth directly follows the largest single decade increase of the 1990s. [3]

, The Census Bureau news releases and public statements included summaries of the numerical growth but provided little context for those numbers, focusing almost exclusively on the percentage rate instead. By comparing current expansion to an increasingly higher bar indicative of our bigger baseline population size, this analysis carries an inherent bias toward growth.

At a press conference held on December 21, 2010, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves presented a series of charts and graphs and summarized them by saying, “The percentage growth this last decade…is thus the second lowest of the past century.”[4] In specifically citing the “percentage growth” on a decade-by-decade basis, Director Groves reserved his agency a sliver of plausible deniability in a remarkably disingenuous summary that was faithfully echoed throughout the media coverage. Without this distinction, this statement would have been completely inaccurate, and it is highly misleading to suggest that the past decade’s population growth in the U.S. was slow in any meaningful context. Our population increased by 22 million and 23 million in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. When compared to the aughts increase of at least 27.5 million, those decades were slower growing eras. The 1990s experienced the fastest population growth in U.S. history, so it is not surprising that the pace of growth might slow soon after, especially in a decade that concluded in a recession. But summarizing short-term data as if it represents longer-term trends rises, in this case, to statistical malpractice.

Figure A, below, shows both the percentage rate analysis emphasized by the Census Bureau and the numerical increases upon which those percentages are based. .[5]

Figure A

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Looking at the percentage growth indicated by the red line, it is easy to think that U.S. population growth has gradually receded and that our population is stabilizing. We could find comfort there, if that was really the case. But the Census Bureau’s statements made only perfunctory references to the data indicated by the blue columns, with virtually no context or comparative data, and declined to represent the numerical increases in any of their widely released graphic materials. As you can see, the percentage-based analysis, the exclusive focus of the Census Bureau statements, contrasts sharply with the numerical analysis, which clearly indicates that the gradual slowing of our population growth seen in the 1970s and 1980s has been reversed. Our country is currently growing faster than ever.

If the Bureau wanted to effectively illustrate long-term implications of our growth, they could have used a rolling average, as statisticians often do in situations where short-term variations are acknowledged to be potentially misrepresentative. A twenty-year rolling average for the decades since 1930 produces the following graph (Figure B).[6]

Figure B

Even if you specifically bracket the baby boom years, comparing the growth from 1945 to 1965 rather than distinct decades, the two decades of the baby boom saw an increase of 54 million people in our population, while the millennium boom has surpassed 60 million. As the economy recovers, immigration is also likely to rise. Taking births to recent immigrants into account, this boom is likely to drive forward with still more rapid population growth, making this not only the largest population surge in our history, but also the most sustained one. That, however, is not the message that was portrayed in the release of the 2010 Census results.

Why do my own statements about rapid US population growth so drastically contradict those characterizations made by the Census Bureau? The difference is in the way the facts have been reported. Figure C is from the press packets made available by the Census Bureau in December 2010.[7]

Figure C

As you can see, this graph portrays the overall population size using green bars. This portrayal however, depicts the per-decade increases on a much diminished scale, making it very difficult to discern even minor variations between decades. Had they used the bar elements of the graph to portray decennial increases rather than cumulative totals, the differences in numerical growth between decades would be much more emphatic. So what this graph most readily conveys is not the decade-by-decade total size as shown by the green bars, but the decade to decade shifts in the percentage growth, indicated by the jagged red line, so that the percentage growth of one decade becomes the visual standard by which the succeeding decade is measured. Since the 1990s witnessed the largest numerical growth in our history, anything that follows is thus compared to a higher base, making it seem far less consequential than the numerical comparisons would suggest. .[8] Furthermore, consider how Director Groves explained this graphic during the December 21^st press conference. “There are two notable decades here. Between 1930 and 1940, the small growth rate of 7.3% is thought to be related to the great depression of the 1930s. Between 1950 and 1960, the high growth rate of 18.5% reflects the so-called baby boom.”[9] Groves did not include the 1990s in his description of the most significant decades.

Now have a look at a graphic that was used in 2001 to inform the American public of the demographic tsunami recorded in the 2000 census.

Figure E

So why did the 2010 graphic emphasize only percentages and the blunt indicator of total population size while the 2000 graphic provided a clear illustration of the numerical growth and the way it sharply varies from the percentage growth? And why did Director Groves not describe the 1990s as notable when they saw the largest population growth in the history of the developed world?

The reasons the current Census team chose to do so could very well hinge on the Obama Administration’s desire to avoid a robust debate on U.S. population growth. A central factor in that growth, and one that might explain the Census Bureau’s portrayal of current trends, is immigration. The Obama administration supports comprehensive immigration reform, including some form of amnesty, but the public is still divided. One could argue the dynamics would change if the Census Bureau admitted in good faith that the U.S. is in the midst of the largest demographic surge in our history.

On the evening of the preliminary 2010 Census data release, Census Director Groves appeared on the PBS evening Newshour. The moderator, Judy Woodruff, inquired about the role of immigration, to which the Census Director replied, “Immigration is a part of our picture, as in most developed societies. Over the last 10 years, a rough estimate would be about 60 percent of the growth we experienced was from the natural increase of the then resident (emphasis added) population, about 40 percent from immigration.”[10] This response is inaccurate in two ways. First, immigration’s impact on American population size is not comparable to its impact in other developed nations. As of the 1980’s the U.S. tracked steadily towards population stabilization in league with countries such as Great Britain, Germany and Japan, but we have veered sharply upwards. According to the UN, we’re growing faster than Thailand, and unless we reduce immigration, we will be growing faster than the Dominican Republic in three decades.[11] Secondly, the Director emphasized only the percentage of people who enter the country, but specifically avoided pointing out that when you consider the children born to immigrants, the total impact of immigration is about 65% of total growth, rather than 40% he cited. The Census Director has phrased his words very carefully here, resulting in a clear but disingenuous disconnect between our historically unprecedented immigration and population growth’s economic, social and environmental impacts.

This debate may seem inconsequential to those who seldom consider the topic of domestic population growth. It’s important to realize, however, that the issue of U.S. population growth, in the absence of Census Bureau efforts to call attention to it, probably won’t achieve close scrutiny any time soon. Without reductions in both legal and illegal immigration rates, the 2020 Census is likely to reflect a continuation not of the pause in rapid growth that we experienced between 2006 and 2010, but of the unprecedented resurgence in population growth seen between 1990 and 2005. Putting forth misleading impressions that growth is slowing down makes it far less likely that the impact of immigration on population growth will play a pivotal role in our impending changes to immigration policy. Since immigration drives approximately two-thirds of our population growth, and immigration reform is on a short list of priorities at the White House, it is very important that the American public is aware of its impact.

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[1] Hereafter referred to as the “aughts.”

[2] 1950-1960 figures based on: Census Bureau-- Historical National Population Estimates, 1900 to 1999 (8k), found at: http://www.census.gov/popest/archives/1990s/popclockest.txt

2000-2010 figure based on: Census Bureau—U.S. Census Bureau Announces 2010 Census Population Counts Apportionment Counts Delivered to President; found at http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb10-cn93.html

This press release did not specifically cite the numerical growth, only the percentage, but I did the math all by myself!

[3] United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: 2008 Revison, found at http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp Note, I compared the growth from 1950 onward for the ten most populous countries as listed by the US Census Bureau, found here: http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp96/wp96005.pdf,

[4] United States Census Bureau/ CSPAN Video Library.: U.S. Population: 308,745,538, 21 December 2010. 20 http://www.c-span.org/Events/US-Population-308745538/10737418368-1/

[5] 1900 to 2000 figures based on: Census Bureau-- Historical National Population Estimates, 1900 to 1999 (8k), found at: http://www.census.gov/popest/archives/1990s/popclockest.txt 2000 estimate based on: Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008 (NST-EST2008-01), found at http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est2008.html; For 2010 figure—Ibid.

[6] Ibid. Rolling average was calculated for year indicated by calculating the increase of the previous twenty years and dividing by two.

[7] U.S. Census Bureau; Apportionment Data. http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-data.php

[8]Perry, Mark J, et al., Census 2000 Brief : 1990 to 2000, Population Change and Distribution, Issued April 2001, C2KBR/01-2

[9] United States Census Bureau/ CSPAN Video Library.: U.S. Population: 308,745,538, 21 December 2010. 20 http://www.c-span.org/Events/US-Population-308745538/10737418368-1/

[10] Newshour on PBS, Dec. 21, 1010, Judy Woodworth interview with Robert Groves, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec10/census1_12-21.html

[11] United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: 2008 Revison, found at http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp