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100 Million
More People
Coming Up?
CALVIN L. BE ALE

DEMOGRAPHERS should be a
humble breed. They have
D"
been wrong in their predictions about
some major trends in the population.
Even after the baby boom of World
War II, many population analysts
failed to see how much growth the
United States was about to get.
They continued to project low rates
of future increase that would have led
to no more than 166 million people in
1970 compared with the 204.7 million
found in the 1970 census. Yet paradoxically, while underestimating total
growth, they overestimated the future
size of the farm population.
The demographic record is not all
one of shortsightedness, however. In
the 1940 Yearbook of Agriculture, two
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's demographers wrote of the
need for a national policy on ruralurban migration. But the Nation's
leaders in government, business, and
civic life did not attempt to cope with
the effects of the huge flow of people
out of rural areas until after most of
the potential flow had already taken
place.
In any event, the well-publicized
difl&culty that demographers have had
in projecting certain trends has not
lost them their clientele. The questions
continue to press in. How many births
will we have? How large will our
population get? Where will people
live?
The questions are particularly important at a time when values and
objectives of the young adult generation seem to be changing in ways
that might affect family size, and when
the technology and acceptance of birth

control methods have also changed.

So, the discussion that follows is directed to a consideration of the present
and future size of the U.S. population
and its location.
The Bureau of the Census estimates
that there were 206 million people
living in the United States on January
1, 1971, making this country the
world's fourth most populous nation.
After a period of rather rapid growth
in the 1940's and 1950's, the rate of
population change slowed in the 1960's
as the birth rate went down. Even so,
we are still currently adding 2 million
people a year, through the combination of natural increase (excess of
births over deaths) and immigration.
Arrival of the population at the 200
million mark has drawn attention to
the probable timing of the addition of
the next 100 million. We have also
seen a rapid rise of interest in the zero
population growth concept, with its
insistence on the necessity to end population growth and to do so well before
another 100 million has been added
to our total.
What is the range of probabilities
and alternatives before us? Wide, very
wide. The critical fact before all nations today in which childbearing is
largely deliberate, is that the death
rate in such societies is low. Less than
4 percent of all infants born in modern
societies die before reaching age 25,
whereas in the most underdeveloped
countries it is not uncommon for 20
percent to die before 1 year of age.
In the United States, each 100
women passing through the childbearing years need to have only about
210 children to fully replace their
generation100 for themselves, 100
for the fathers, and about 10 to allow
for children who fail to survive to
adulthood. Under these conditions,
even an average of three children per
family leads to fairly rapid population
growthabout 40 percent in each 25year generation.
CALVIN L. BEALE Is Leader of the Population Studies Group, Economic Development Division, Economic Research Service.

Thus, fairly minor shifts in average

family size can have considerable effect
on the future size of the Nation's population. Women who are presently
35-39 years old will have borne about
320 children per 100 women by the
time they fully complete their childbearing. If we perpetuate the family
size preferences of this generation, the
Nation would add its next 100 million
people very quicklyby about 1997
and its next 200 million by 2015!
On the other hand, women who are
presently 55-64 years old, and who
thus lived much of their young adult
life during the Depression, only bore
221 children per 100 women. This
was a level barely sufficient to replace
the parental population. If adopted
by oncoming generations of young
adults, it would bring the Nation to a
nearly stationaryor zero growth
status without immigration by 2037.
Even so, the population would be
about 275 million by that time.
In short, within our recent history,
we have had one generation motivated
to have families large enough to provide a rapid population increase and
another which restricted its family size
to the replacement level, even without
modern birth control methods. This
is what makes accurate projection of
future population size so difficult.
At present, the number of young
people entering the marriage and
chiidbearing ages is very large in relation to the number of people at
advanced ages where most deaths occur. And the number of young adults
will become ever larger throughout
the 1970's, reflecting the coming of
age of the huge numbers of children
who were born in the 1950's. Thus,
even if young adults marry late and
form rather modest-sized families, they
are so numerous that the births they
have will greatly exceed deaths that
occur from the much smaller numbers
of older people.
Recent years do, in fact, show less
early marriage and early chiidbearing.
In the mid-1950's, 20 percent of all
girls married before age 18. That
figure has now fallen to 12 percent.

Furthermore, women who are presently under 25 years of age have borne
only 70 percent as many children to
date as had women of this age 10
years ago. Continuation of this relative
level of chiidbearing would result in
a completed average family size only
slightly above replacement level.
Thus at the present point in time,
the young generation seems to have
different values and objectives concerning the family than their immediate predecessors did. But whether such
changed behavior will persist through
the remainder of their chiidbearing
years no one can say with certainty.
It seems reasonable to conclude that
in our past history families have rarely
limited their family size from considerations of national welfare. Available
family income or the family-size modes
of one's social equals were more likely
to be dominant factors.
Today, however, there is some evidence of couples consciously limiting
their chiidbearing to a low level
because of beliefs about the undesirability of further increasing the national population. Questions of future
environmental quality seem to loom
large in the thinking of such couples.
In short, it is not at all impossible
that chiidbearing may fall below
generational replacement levels in the
future.
A further element in the present
and future growth of the U.S. population is immigration. Net migration
into the country has grown to more
than 400,000 per year, and presently
contributes a fifth of our total population growth.
But should the birth rate decline
further, and immigration remain at
its present level, immigration would
contribute an increasingly higher part
of our total growth. Such a condition
would almost certainly make the volume of immigration more of a national
issue than it presently is.
Because many immigrants are
young, they bear children after arriving here and thus make a further
addition to population growth. Even
if the immigrants have only enough

FUTURE U.S. POPULATION

Millions

>

375

300^ y"^

300

225

203^^^

<'

^^

386
1

300
**"

-
275111.

150

. 1 .
1
1
1
1
1 1 1 1^%/J-....^U-J.^1
^-O-^ ^^^^ .,-U.^J^UsXJUi

75

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

2040

FUTURE CHILDBEARING ASSUMPTIONS OF PROJECTIONS:

I. Same rate as generation now 35-39 years old.
II. Sufficient only to replace parental generation, but with immigration.
III. Same as II, but no immigration.
Source: Bureau of the Census.

children to replace themselves, current

immigration levels will add about 5
million additional to our population
size every 10 years.
To summarize the prospects for
adding a hundred million moreif
the present and oncoming generations
bear children at the rate that people
now 35-39 years old have, and if
present immigration levels continue,
we will have that next hundred million
by 1997. If childbearing drops to the
level needed only for generational replacement and immigration continues,
we will not get it until the year 2020.
If childbearing were to drop to this
level or lower and if net immigration
were stopped, we would not add another hundred million, but would still
add many million people beyond our
present level.
At present the interest of policy
makers in population trends seems to
focus as much on the distribution of
people as on their number. Population

distribution policy issues are discussed

in another chapter, but the recent
trends will be described here.
About 74 percent of our people now
live in urban territory, that is, in
places of 2,500 or more population or
in the densely settled suburbs of large
cities. The remaining 26 percent, or
about 54 million, are rural, living in
the open country or in towns of less
than 2,500 population.
The rural proportion has declined
in every census for 150 years. The
number of rural people has changed
very Httle at the national level in the
last 40 years. All of our net growth
has been urban.
We have been a predominantly
urban people since 1920. It is not so
much the fact of urbanization that is
of interest these days, however, as it is
the scale of urbanization. There are
now 32 metropolitan areas in the
United States that contain more than
1 million people each! And some of

these now link with smaller metro

areas to form several massive metropolitan regions.
Between 1960 and 1970, the population in metropolitan areas grew
more than twice as rapidly as that in
the small city and rural territory that
makes up the nonmetro areas (17 percent compared with 7 percent). Since
both populations would grow at about
the same rate in the absence of migration, the difference is a clear indication of the movement of many people
away from the nonmetro and into the
metro areas during the decade.
People move for many reasons, but
the most common one is economic.
Too often, the primarily agricultural
or coal mining sections of the Nation
have been areas of declining employment as mechanization displaced
workers, and people sought better
jobsor even any jobin the larger
cities. As a result, we have more than
18 million adults living in our urban
places and suburbs who are of rural
childhood origin, and they make up

a fifth of the total urban adult

population.
If one considers only nonfarm
people, then the trends outside of
metro areas look rather different. The
nonfarm nonmetropolitan population
grew somewhat more rapidly than the
Nation as a whole did in the 1960's,
reflecting a favorable growth rate of
nonagricultural jobs.
The continued drop in farm employment offset so much of this gain
that the public image of small city
and rural areas has been one of economic stagnation or decline. But the
agricultural job decline has about run
its course. With the farm population
now only a third as large, it just
isn't possible for as many workers to be
displaced in the future.
If the nonmetropolitan areas can
continue their recent gains in nonagricultural jobs, more of these gains
will be translated in the future into
overall growth and a greater ability
to retain population in the small city
and rural areas.

U.S. POPULATION CHANGE, 1960-70

U.S. Total
Total Metro
Total Nonmetro
Nonfarm

% Change

Farm

19.3

20

13.3

16.6
Ma

10

-10
-20

-30
Source: Bureau of the Census.

-36.0

Construction of new homes near Largo, Md., a suburb of Washington.

It must be recognized, however, that

as rural or nonmetropolitan areas
grow, the larger ones are transformed
by the growth into urban or metropolitan areas, and are reclassified as
such. Thus there is very little prospect
of increasing the total size of the rural
and small city population.
The population has been shifting
regionally as well as from small communities to large. Despite the jibes
serious or comicthat are made about
southern California's smog, sprawl,
and freeways, many people are still
attracted to that area and to the whole
Southwest in general.
California, Arizona, and Nevada together appear to have had about two
and a half million increase in population in the last 10 years from migration alone. At the other end of the
country, Florida continues to boom,
with over a million net immigrants in
the decade.
In both regionsthe Southwest and
Floridaclimate seems to be a major
factor in attracting people. The United
States is short of areas that have mild
winters, and it is hard to predict anything but increasing future congestion
for those that do.
People also continue to move into
many parts of the megalopolitan belt
that stretches from Washington, D.C.,
to Boston. The extensive trade, educational, research, governmental, and
service industries of this densely settled
area support a growing population.

But most of the growth is now in

outlying parts of the belt, with the
central cities or older suburbs often
being just as great exporters of people
as any agricultural area.
On the other hand, large areas in
the Great Plains and western Corn
Belt are failing to retain their potential
population growth. The States of Iowa,
Kansas, Nebraska, North and South
Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming grew
in population by only 2 percent in the
1960's, including their metropolitan
areas. They sent two-thirds of a million
migrants to other regions of the
country.
In the South, the Mississippi Delta
and the Southern Appalachian coal
fields declined in population, each
giving up about 300,000 migrants.
Many of them went directly to northern cities, if past trends are any judge
of their destinations.
In summary, our national population is currently growing by about
2 million a year. Its future growth is
not easily predictable, because attitudes toward desirable family size may
be changing, and comparatively minor
changes in typical family size can have
a substantial effect on population
growth. But the number of young
people now coming of marriage and
childbearing age is so large that even
with low fertility their births will
greatly outnumber the Nation's deaths
for many years to come.
The country will have a further
major increase in its population re-

gardless of whether we attain another

100 million in this century or not.
This increase will almost certainly be
concentrated in the metropolitan-sized
communities, just as the present population is. But with the diminishing loss
of jobs from farming, the rural and
small city areas seem much more likely
than in the past to be able to develop
enough nonagricultural employment
to offset the further declines in farming. Many areas have shown this capacity in the 1960's.

Managing
Space for
All of Us
GENE WUNDERLICH and
WILLIAM DYER ANDERSON
FELLOWSHIP of man is fine,
in moderate amounts. After
a point, however, the presence of
others may annoyand even destroy
us. The increase in human numbers
presents us with a problem of managing diminishing average space.
A strategy for coping with this problem is to (1) promote the art and
science of understanding space relationships; (2) design and engineer
structures and population for effective
use of space; and (3) design and develop organizations and procedures for
regulating human interaction. Some
of the ingredients of this strategy follow
below in this and other chapters.
In this chapter we treat the space
problem narrowly as a human problem. Viewing spaceship earth strictly
as a human enterprise is subject to
many dangers, as ecologists have made
us painfully aware. Nevertheless, if our
chapter is to focus on human relationships, we will simply have to acknowl-

edge that the earth contains many

creatures and features and let it go
at that. The message of this chapter is
mostly about the distances among
people.
But what is the meaning of space to
an individual? North Americans, for
example, feel intruded upon if a
stranger invades the 4-foot-distance
barrier. They are uncomfortable if
even a friend converses closer than 2
feet. Yet 25 feet is a "public" distance
and people do not care to do private
business at such lengths even if they
can be heard. Distance has important
effects on human relationships in work,
living, and recreation.
Within limits, perceptions of distance are a result of culture. It is
known, for example, that the typical
Latin American prefers to stand about
six inches closer to his partner in conversation than the North American.
Unless this cultural differential is understood by parties involved, the North
American is "cold and standoffish"
and the Latin American is "pushy and
overbearing." Distance can be meassured psychologically, socially, and
culturally.
We can extend the idea of linear
distance into a two-dimensional area
or territory. Even further, we can say
that man surrounds himself in a psychological "space bubble"of variable dimensions for different functions.
Intrusions into this space may be regarded as hostile or at least disagreeable.
In order to voluntarily yield a portion of this space, some compensation
is required. For example, one will accept a crowded bus if it is cheaper or
more convenient than riding one's own
car. Or a person will accept a smaller
residential lot because it is cheaper
than a large one. When one's private
space is invaded, one expects the
compensation of a graceful "thank
you" or "excuse me."
GENE WUNDERLICH is an cconomist in the
Natural Resource Economics Division, Economic Research Service.
WILLIAM DYER ANDERSON is an attorney in
the Division.