APRIL 2020
What If Immigration Fell to Zero Without it, America’s population would shrink
Happiness Is a U-Shaped Curve Survey shows age is key to that good feeling
Who’s Afraid of Mother Nature? The environment ranks high in 2020 election
The Average American Is Plus-Sized Growing girth is opening a big market
Demographics of a Pandemic Comparing 1918’s worldwide influenza with today’s COVID-19
On the Bookshelf New books and films are putting population trends into focus
“It says that I am a direct descendent of Lord Tyrion Lannister, you know the guy on Game of Thrones.” “
IN THIS ISSUE OF
APRIL 2020
PUBLISHER Phillip Russo
EDITORIAL STAFF Brad Edmondson
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American Demographics is Back
5
What If Immigration Fell to Zero
Cheryl Russell Joe Azzinaro Sara Williamson George Puro
6
Demographics of a Pandemic
Dane Twining Tom Prendergast
8
Census Day and Counting? CREATIVE DIRECTOR
12 Who’s Afraid of Mother Nature? 13 Happiness Is a U-Shaped Curve 14 The Average American Is Plus-Sized
Melissa Subatch
American Demographics and americandemographics.com are owned by the Private Label Manufacturers Association, 630 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 and licensed for publication by Kent Media, 240 Central Park South, New York, N.Y. 10019. Periodicals postage paid at Macedonia, OH and additional mailing offices.
All rights reserved under the Library of Congress. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing by the copyright owners.
APRIL 2020
What If Immigration Fell to Zero Without it, America’s population would shrink
Happiness Is a U-Shaped Curve Survey shows age is key to that good feeling
Who’s Afraid of Mother Nature? The environment ranks high in 2020 election
The Average American Is Plus-Sized Growing girth is opening a big market
Demographics of a Pandemic Comparing 1918’s worldwide influenza with today’s COVID-19
On the Bookshelf New books and films are putting population trends into focus
American Demographics is Back!
elcome to this month’s issue of American Demographics. There is no doubt that the coronavirus has upended everyone’s plans and expectations for the year 2020. The editors have added two stories which reflect this fact. First, Demographics of a Pandemic looks at the worldwide influenza of 1918 and draws comparisons with today’s COVID-19. Second, our cover story examines the disruption that it has caused at the Census Bureau which has been preparing for the all-important 2020 “enumeration.” The coronavirus has also had its impact on the transition of the magazine from print to digital delivery. Website designers still are hard at work creating a new and exciting American Demographics which emphasizes video and audio as well as the printed page. Unfortunately, they have to stay at home while doing so. American Demographics has been the place to go for information about the trends impacting our lives for more than 25 years. As always, the staff of editors, reporters and experts pore through the dense governmental and academic publications in demographics, geology, gerontology, sociology and other fields to bring you insight into the diverse—and now changing—world around us. American Demographics is back and better than ever.
to subscribe, visit: www.americandemographics.com
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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I APRIL 2020
By Cheryl Russell
What If Immigration Fell to Zero Without it, America’s population would shrink hat if immigration falls even lower? What if it fell to zero and stayed there for the next 40 years? This question intrigued the nation’s official forecasters, so they took it upon themselves to figure out the answer. The results appear in the Census Bureau report, A Changing Nation: Population Projections Under Alternative Immigration Scenarios, which shows the impact of high, low, and zero levels of immigration on the size and composition of the US population. The zero-immigration assumption is hypothetical, writes bureau analyst Sandra Johnson, “and shows what would happen to the existing US population if it did not grow through immigration.” With zero immigration, the only way the population could grow would be through births. But if there are more deaths than births, the population would decline. And that’s exactly what happens. Because of our low birth rate and a rising death rate due to the aging of the baby-boom generation, the number of births and deaths would begin to converge. Beginning in 2039, deaths would outnumber births. The rate of natural increase would turn negative for the first time in
our history. Without immigrants to make up the difference, the American population would begin to shrink. With zero immigration, the 330 million Americans of today would fall to 320 million by 2060—a loss of 10 million people. Even more startling, there would be 84 million fewer US residents in 2060 than the Census Bureau projects in its “middle series” (or most likely) forecast. The middle series assumes immigration in the decades ahead will be similar to what it was from 2011 to 2015. At that level of immigration, the US population would rise to 404 million in 2060. With zero immigration, the population would be 21 percent smaller than the population projected in the middle series scenario. Not surprisingly, zero immigration also would change the racial and ethnic makeup of the future population. According to the Census Bureau’s middle series projections, non-Hispanic whites are forecast to shrink from 60 percent of the US population today to just 44 percent in 2060. But if immigration fell to zero, non-Hispanic whites would maintain their majority status and in 2060 account for 51 percent of the population.
US POPULATION UNDER ALTERNATIVE IMMIGRATION SCENARIOS (in millions)
2020
2060
DIFFERENCE
Most likely scenario
330
404
+74
Zero immigration scenario
330
320
–10
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I APRIL 2020
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By Joe Azzinaro
Demographics of a Pandemic Comparing 1918’s worldwide
influenza with today’s COVID-19 t started in France at a field hospital and
But the flu is different from COVID-19 in many ways. Accord-
staging area for British troops in World
ing to National Geographic, the 1918 flu killed with deadly
War I. Or perhaps it was Haskell, Kansas where
speed, with many reports of people who woke up sick, then
newly inducted soldiers unknowingly carried
died on their way to work. Perhaps the most important dif-
the virus across the Atlantic to battlefields in Europe. Or
ference is timing. The flu pandemic coincided with World War
maybe it was China where merchant seamen took the
I, which helped the disease spread along with troops from
virus to Boston and from there it travelled to France. The
place to place. In contrast, due to COVID-19, many nations
1918 pandemic was the most devastating ever recorded,
have enacted travel restrictions to areas with infections.”
killing 50 million to 100 million people. To this day, scientists debate its origin and its path of contagion. But one thing is certain, it contains lessons for today’s coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s natural to want to compare the two,” adds Dylan Matthews, in Vox. But it’s important to keep in mind just how severe [the 1918 flu] was. “The COVID-19 situation may only get that bad if we fail to adequately adopt measures
“When the first wave hit in the spring of 1918, it seemed like
like social distancing, aggressive testing, and quarantin-
another flu. But then the second wave began at the end of
ing.” However, COVID-19’s economic impact could be even
summer,” says Peter Schelden, of MedicineNet Health News.
greater than the flu’s, says Matthews, “due to the econo-
“In November, a village in Alaska was one of the first to see
my’s reliance today on in-person services, hospitality, and
its deadliest manifestation. In five days, 72 out of of 80 adult
globalized supply chains, all of which are vulnerable to an
residents lost their lives. It would go on to kill an estimated
outbreak like this.”
675,000 in the US” About 28% of the US population of 105 million became infected. In Canada, 50,000 died.
“But even granting that we are early in the history of the coronavirus outbreak, there are important differences
“What can it tell us about COVID-19?” he continues. “For
between it and the 1918 flu. The underlying diseases are
one, both diseases came from an animal source. Re-
different, and from what we know at this point, the case fa-
search suggests the flu came from a bird. Experts sus-
tality rate of the coronavirus is lower. We also enjoy a much
pect an animal hosted the COVID-19 strain before it start-
more comprehensive public health infrastructure in 2019.
ed to infect humans.”
As flu expert Jeremy Brown writes in The Atlantic, ‘What’s most striking about these comparisons is not the similarities between the two episodes, but the distance that medicine has traveled in the intervening century.’” One of the most important differences is that the 1918 flu was particularly deadly to persons between 20 and 40 years old, particularly pregnant women. The 1918 strain of influenza was unusual for most people under the age of 40 or 50, and that’s where the death rate was high, said Dr. Mark Schleiss, of the University of Minnesota. “Back then,
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AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I APRIL 2020
As COVID-19, spreads, experts are turning to 1918 for clues on how to deal with a public health crisis
scientists didn’t know viruses caused disease, and we didn’t yet have a vaccine or antivirals to help prevent or treat influenza, nor did we have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections.” Life was very different then as well. As the soldiers of WWI carried the virus around the world, much of the world’s population were living in crowded conditions and had extremely poor hygiene, which only helped the disease build. Laura Spinney, author of Pale Rider, an account of the 1918 pandemic, concurs. “The (1918) flu is really anomalous in the history of flu pandemics. We’ve had 15 flu pandemics in the last 500 years and the last five since the 1890s have been measured in a scientific way. None—other than the 1918 event—has killed more than 3 million. The ‘Asian flu’ of 1957 and ‘Hong Kong flu’ of 1968 were both met with more modern tools of disease surveillance and had death tolls in the range of 500,000 to 2 million. Big numbers, for sure, but hardly 1918 levels,” she points out. As COVID-19, spreads, experts are turning to 1918 for clues on
the University of Michigan and the Centers for Disease Control
how to deal with a public health crisis, says Sara Chodosh in
and Prevention looked at 43 cities and examined whether early
Popular Science. In 1918 we didn’t have widespread air travel,
social distancing measures actually helped in 1918. The findings
nor did we have antibiotics, which can help with infections that
were unequivocal: Early, sustained, and layered non-pharma-
accompany respiratory diseases that cause many of the deaths
ceutical interventions did mitigate the consequences of the 1918
in a viral outbreak. A hundred years ago, we didn’t even know
influenza pandemic in the US and reduced deaths.
what viruses were.
“Our medical knowledge and way of life may have changed
But one aspect of pandemics remains: non-pharmaceutical
drastically in the last century,” says Chodosh, “but the way vi-
interventions—the technical term for the non-medical precau-
ruses spread from person to person hasn’t—and neither has
tions that governments and other organizations put in place to
the effect of social distancing.” Still, offers Matthews, “the im-
prevent the spread of an illness, which includes social distancing
pact of the 1918 flu continues to this day. Descendants of the
measures, like closing schools and implementing quarantines.
virus can still be found in pigs and ever since a lab accident in
To discover how such interventions impacted the spread and
1977 nearly all human cases of influenza A have been caused
progress of the 1918 influenza virus in the US, researchers from
by its descendants.”
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I APRIL 2020
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BY B RAD E D M O NDSON
Coronavirus Adds Unexpected Disruption to the Nation’s “Enumeration” he City of Syracuse, New York was going to observe Census Day—April 1, 2020—by throwing a big office party. “We were going to call it Census And A Slice,” says Tori Russo, the City’s Census coordinator. City and county officials were going to invite desk workers to do yoga stretches, have their shoulders massaged, enjoy free pizza and other treats, fill out their Census forms, and maybe volunteer to help with other events Russo and her team were planning for the month. Syracuse has 19 neighborhoods the Census Bureau has identified as being hard to count. “We were going to do a similar party tailored to each of those neighborhoods,” says Russo. 8
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I APRIL 2020
In the Near Westside, which has a lot of Latino residents, the plan was to raffle off a basket of Goya products and get the mayor to lead salsa dancing. The Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) crisis has postponed or cancelled those events and thousands more planned by local groups to promote the nation’s once-in-a-decade headcount. Quarantines, curfews, and “social distancing” aimed at slowing the spread of the virus halted much of America’s business and social life in mid-March. As this story went to press in early April, mayors and governors were consulting with public health experts to decide when to lift the restrictions, but much of the country was still locked down.
“In our worst nightmares about what could go wrong with the Census, we did not anticipate this,” said Al Fontenot, the Census Bureau’s associate director for decennial programs. The disruption caused by COVID-19 “was not anything any of us could have anticipated or planned.” Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution requires the federal government to regularly conduct “an actual enumeration” of “the whole number of free persons.” Since 1790, the Census Bureau has done the job in every year that ends in zero. The Census takes months to conduct, but its official goal is to enumerate all persons in the United States on April 1. And April 1, 2020 was no ordinary day. The Census Bureau estimates 329,281,000 people were in the United States on April 1. That number is based on surveys, plus records of births, deaths, and immigration, and it is only available at the national level. The headcount, which is officially called “The Decennial Census of Population and Housing,” must assign each individual to an address, because it is used to draw district boundaries for the US House of Representatives. This is an enormous job, but the Bureau has gotten pretty good at it. Follow-up research after the last Census found the official US population total for April 1, 2010 (308,745,538) was too high by just 0.01 percent. Over the years, the Census Bureau’s numbers have been integrated into most of the essential functions of government. The Census now determines how $675 billion a year in federal aid flows to states and localities. That works out to about $2,050 per person per year, or more than $20,000 per person over the next decade. Medicaid accounts for almost half of that total, according to Andrew Reamer of the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy. But dozens of other local government functions also depend on the aid, including transportation programs, affordable housing, special education, and even school breakfasts. State and local governments also depend on accurate neighborhood-level numbers to improve their operations in countless ways.
www.my2020census.gov, confirm your address, follow the step-by-step instructions, and get a confirmation number? If you did, good for you. If you didn’t, please do it soon, because if you don’t, someone will have to knock on your door before this thing is over, and it will be much easier for both of you if that doesn’t have to happen. The Census asks just seven questions about each person at a specific address (Name? Usual address? Relationship to head of the household? Sex? Age? Hispanic origin? Race?). Filling out the form online takes less than five minutes, or someone can telephone in the answers. The Bureau’s main goal is to maximize the number of household heads who fill out the form themselves. On March 20, the Bureau unveiled a nifty online map, updated daily, that shows the percentage of households that have “self-responded” in every US neighborhood. (To see how your neighborhood is doing, go to https://2020census.gov and enter “response rates” in the search bar).
Unlike the federal government, state and local governments cannot print money. So, if their federal aid decreases, local officials face unpleasant options: raise taxes, cut services, go into debt, or all three. One of the main things that will determine whether or not the Bureau reaches its goal is how many Americans—especially in a time of health crisis—do their civic duty. The Bureau mailed a letter to every address in the country in mid-March, asking recipients to respond online, by phone, or on paper. Did you get one? Did you enter its unique 12-digit code at
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I APRIL 2020
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delivered by trusted neighbors and local leaders. About 350,000 people from state and local governments, nonprofit groups, and churches will spend the next three months selling the Census to their neighbors, according to Timothy Olsen, the Bureau’s associate director for field operations. His office works with these local groups, most of which are staffed by volunteers. The more people who fill out their Census forms themselves, the cheaper and more accurate the Census will be. That is why the Census Bureau is spending upwards of $500 million this year on advertising and outreach. They need as many people as possible to self-respond so they can reduce the burden on census-takers who go door-to-door. And yes, despite the virus, they are still planning to send people doorto-door. They have to.
PLAN B: NAGGING Dwight Eisenhower, who lead the Allies through Europe during World War II, once said that in an emergency, the first thing a leader should do is “take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window. But if you haven’t been planning, you can’t start to work intelligently,” he added. “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” The Census Bureau’s plan is to encourage self-response through a huge, multi-layered marketing campaign that relies heavily on “peer-to-peer communication,” which means “nagging.” At the top of the campaign is professionally produced advertising that the Bureau hopes will inspire feelings of patriotism. But those feelings aren’t simple, because Americans’ trust in government is at historic lows. Only 17 percent of Americans say they trusted the government in Washington “always” or “most of the time” in 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. This is a decline from 23 percent in 2010 and 39 percent in 2000. This distrust may be why the Census Bureau’s marketing plans emphasize bottom-line reasons to fill out the form,
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The Census Bureau suspended their field operations for at least two weeks in mid-March, and so did most local groups. Until orders like these are lifted, this temporary army will struggle to find ways to persuade neighbors without any face-toface contact. In California, which has budgeted $187 million on Census outreach efforts, the virus has shifted workers from canvassing neighborhoods and staffing tables to making phone calls and posting on digital media. “Our teams have done an incredible job of adapting,” says Kevin Perez-Allen of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), one of the state’s contractors. “We are still pushing the message that self-response is the best method of participating.”
PLAN C: ANSWER THE DOOR The Census Bureau had just finished hiring about 600,000 temporary employees when they suspended field operations. Three times that many had applied for the jobs, according to Olson, perhaps because the jobs pay an average of more than $18 an hour. The next step is training. It takes six to eight weeks to train an enumerator. Most of the field work was scheduled to begin in late April. Due to the suspension, the Bureau has extended the deadline for “non-response follow-up operations” (NRFU, which means going door to door) from July 31 to August 14. Olsen says enumerators will be sent out as soon as health officials say it’s safe to do so.
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I APRIL 2020
Door-to-door enumeration is essential because not everybody is online. According to the Pew Research Center, about 10 percent of Americans (32 million people) never use the internet. At last count, about 3.7 percent (11.8 million) did not have a cell phone or land line, a share that actually increased between 2014 and 2017. Reaching that last 10 percent accounts for much of the expense of a Census, but the Constitution requires it. Hard-to-count places must be counted the old-fashioned way, through postal mailings and door-to-door visits. Some of these places are extremely remote. For example, the 2020 enumeration started on January 21 in Toksook Bay, an Alaskan village on the Bering Sea, where very few have access to the internet. Other hard-to-count places are neighborhoods where recent immigrants may not speak English or know the details about how American government works. More than 9.3 million immigrants arrived in the US between 2010 and 2017, according to the Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, and the most recent arrivals are much more diverse than immigrants used to be. They are more likely to come from Asia, and especially from India and China. The Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela have also seen sizeable emigration to the United States since 2010. In fact, the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States actually declined between 2010 and 2017. The boom in foreign-born residents is why more than 25 million Americans say they do not speak English “very well.” It is also why the Census Bureau’s 2020 education and outreach efforts are being distributed in 59 different languages. (To see an interactive map of hard-to-count neighborhoods, go to www.censushardtocountmaps2020.us). America’s 16.8 million college undergraduates were considered a hard-to-reach group even before the virus hit. But reaching them got even harder in mid-March, when most campuses told their students to stay home for the rest of the semester. The difficulty arose because the Census Bureau counts people in their “usual place of residence” on Census Day, and a lot of students weren’t at their usual place on April 1.
The campus lockdown did not make it any harder to count the 4.2 million undergraduates who live with their parents, because they didn’t move. It’s also still relatively easy to count the 2.6 million undergraduates who live in on-campus housing, because administrators of prisons, nursing homes, and dormitories are allowed to submit rosters to the Census Bureau. According to Census officials, 46 percent of college dorms had agreed to provide rosters before the virus hit. The Bureau is now working with administrators to get rosters from the other half. “We are committed to a complete count of on-campus students,” says Kate Supron of Cornell University. “We are seeking guidance from the federal government to determine the best response method.” It will be much harder to count the 9.55 million undergraduates who usually live independently off-campus, however. Most of these 18 to 22-year-olds left their apartments in a hurry. Many, but not all, are now back in their childhood bedrooms, attending classes online. But few were at their apartments when the mailer arrived with its unique 12-digit code. The Census Bureau knows undergraduates often ignore their mailboxes, even in ordinary times. Their original plan was to send lots of door-to-door enumerators to college towns as early as mid-April. But thanks to COVID-19, the enumerators won’t show up in college towns before May 13 at the earliest, according to Olson. By the time they start going door-to-door, very few of the students will still be there. The Census Bureau’s current plan is to urge marooned undergraduates to go online and when they do, to enter the addresses of their college residences. Fortunately, a person doesn’t need their 12-digit code to reply online. Responses received without the code go to a computer that compares the respondent’s address to the Bureau’s master address list. If the computer can’t make a match after several tries, a human will take over. The Bureau released a video with instructions for off-campus students. The best way to reach them will be through the colleges, many of which are in regular contact with enrolled students through online classes. But the virus has also created an urgent need for college administrators and the mayors of college towns to work together. An incom-
plete count of college students would mean big cuts in federal aid to places like Tompkins County, where higher education dominates the local economy. The county’s total population is 103,000, and 31,000 are enrolled at Cornell or Ithaca College.
SHADOW PEOPLE Although the Census Bureau doesn’t like to talk about it, they routinely count people who are never contacted. When enumerators find an empty apartment, they are told to fill out the census form with second-hand information. It’s OK to ask a landlord or neighbor if someone lived there on April 1. If the answer is no, it’s marked vacant. If the answer is yes, enumerators are told to fill out the form with the best information they can get. In previous censuses, enumerators had to make six visits to a vacant dwelling with no contacts before judging that it was vacant on Census Day. In 2020, they only have to visit once. That is because the Census Bureau has tapped into the databases of more than 30 other federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, US Postal Service, Selective Service System, Indian Health Service, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. When a dwelling is found vacant in 2020, the government will use its own data to fill in the blanks. In 2010, the Census Bureau added almost 1.2 million unseen people to their total, a process they call “count imputation.” After that count ended, they made a big investment in harnessing “administrative data” from other federal agencies because they believed it would cut costs and improve accuracy for the hardest-to-count households. And readers who are worried about privacy should direct their concerns to the individual data profiles compiled by Facebook and other private companies. Those data are bought and sold freely, but it is a felony to disclose anything that comes from an individual Census form.
in 2020 than it was in 2010. The COVID-19 crisis could make administrative data an important component of this Census. And administrative data isn’t as good as first-person responses. It will miss a lot of children, undocumented immigrants, and others who, for one reason or another, are not already on the government’s radar screen. It’s still early. A lot remains unknown about how the virus will spread. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department has asked for a fourmonth extension to April 30, 2021 for submitting the results to Congress. Groups around the country are responding to all of this uncertainty by launching experiments. In Syracuse, Tori Russo had already ordered door hangers and other materials for canvassers before the Governor told nearly everyone in the state to stay home from their workplaces and schools. She’s planning out new ways to distribute these materials by cooperating with grocery stores, drug stores, restaurants doing take-out and delivery, and other essential businesses that remain open when a stay-at-home order is in place. The virus isn’t the only thing that’s in the air. Says Russo, “We’re thinking fast about how to work in new ways.”
If “social distancing” orders persist into the summer, the number of occupied households that refuse to respond could be much higher AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I APRIL 2020
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Who’s Afraid of Mother Nature? The environment ranks high in the 2020 elections. hings are getting greener, and it
per month. Wildfires, hurricanes, floods, wettest
doesn’t have anything to do with
months, and hottest years—we’ve seen it all.
spring. Call it a greening of the mind.
Perhaps most terrifying to people around the
Americans are increasingly con-
world was watching Australia burn. No wonder
cerned about the environment. More than ever be-
the environment has moved up not only on the
fore, they want politicians to pay attention to these
list of fears but also political priorities.
concerns. A record-breaking 64 percent of adults aged 18 or older want environmental protection to be a top policy priority for the president and congress, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey. Only 47 percent felt this way in 2016. Today’s green constituency is almost as large as the 67 percent who say strengthening the economy should be a top priority. Never before has the environment stood shoulder to shoulder with the economy as a political priority.
environmental protection should be a top priority for the president and Congress, making it the age group’s number-one issue. The environment is a lower priority for older age groups, named by 67 percent of people aged 30 to 49, 57 percent of 50-to-64-year-olds, and 55 percent of those aged 65 or older. Note, however,
change. It’s also a frightened public. Americans
top political priority in every age group.
Survey of American Fears. In Chapman’s 2016 survey, environmental events did not appear on the list of the top-10 things feared by the largest Percent of Americans who say environmental protection should be a top priority for the president and Congress,
share of the public. In 2017, four of the ten biggest
2012 to 2020
percent); air pollution (55 percent); extinction
fears were environmental. In 2018, five of the ten biggest fears were environmental—half the list: pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes (62% were afraid of this); pollution of drinking water (61 of plants and animals (54 percent), and climate change (53 percent).
Whether the rise of environmental concerns will influence the 2020 presidential election remains to be seen. But the concerns are already influencing American culture and economy. “I don’t think we can ever be the same,” one traumatized Australian told The New York Times. As extreme weather events keep coming, Americans won’t ever be the same either. Nor will American business. Grocery stores are phasing out the use of plastic bags. Restaurants are eliminating the use of plastic straws. Microsoft is 100 percent net carbon neutral. Walmart and Target are among the largest corporate installers of on-site solar.
Then things got worse, with one extreme weath-
Adapt to the public’s greener mindset or die by
2016: 47%
er event after another. The National Oceanic and
ignoring it. That’s the message for business. Ac-
Atmospheric Administration counts these events,
cording to a study by JUST Capital, reported in
2012: 43%
defined as those causing at least $1 billion in dam-
Forbes, companies that have taken the lead in
age. In 2018 and 2019, there were 28 such events
environmental stewardship have a higher medi-
just in the United States—that’s more than two
an Return-on-Equity than their peers.
Source: Pew Research Center
12
vey. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, 77 percent say
that more than half rank the environment as a
mented over the years by Chapman University’s
2019: 56%
among young adults, according to the Pew sur-
It’s not just tree-huggers driving the attitudinal increasingly fear Mother Nature, a trend docu-
2020: 64%
Concerns about the environment are strongest
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I APRIL 2020
Happiness Is a U-Shaped Curve Surveys show age is key to that good feeling ow happy are you—very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy? Actually, you don’t need to answer that question. Just state your age and we can probably guess. Survey after survey has shown happiness is not only a consequence of best-laid plans and good fortune but also how old you are. If you map happiness by age, you get a U-shaped curve. In your twenties, happiness is relatively high. In middle age, happiness falls to a low. In old age, happiness rises again. That’s the curve of happiness.
Unhappiness has the opposite shape, a hill that rises as people age through their 40s. To study unhappiness, Blanchflower collected survey data from 41 countries. The surveys asked respondents about their feelings of despair, anxiety, loneliness, sadness, worthlessness, and so on. In country after country he finds the same hill. There is a midlife crisis, says Blanchflower. “It appears in both happiness and unhappiness data.” The hill of unhappiness is highest (and happiness lowest) at age 48.2 in developing countries and age 47.2 in developed countries.
There’s an economist who studies these things, and his studies show a strong correlation between happiness and age. Not only is there a U-Curve of Happiness but also a Hill of Unhappiness. They are two sides of the same coin. Happiness is lowest and unhappiness highest at about age 50. So, how old are you? 51 you say? Ok it’s likely you’re over the hill, and that’s a good thing. 41 you say? Hmmm…brace yourself because you’re in for a climb.
What is going on, Blanchflower asks. He answers the question in another National Bureau of Economic Research paper titled Unhappiness and Age. The middle-aged have their reasons for being unhappy, he theorizes. It is the time of life when reality hits, when people realize their youthful aspirations are nothing more than a pipedream. Many look around, compare themselves to their peers, and find themselves coming up short. Not only is midlife tough, says Blanchflower, but it was made even tougher by the Great Recession. He suggests the one-two punch of midlife and the Great Recession explain the rise in “deaths of despair”—deaths due to drugs, alcohol, and suicide. “It is normal to have a midlife dip in well-being, concludes Blanchflower, “but for many, especially those with the least skills, with little social support and few if any savings, that was too much to bear when a giant downturn came along.”
Dartmouth economist David G. Blanchflower has been doing yeoman’s work for years as he maps the relationship between happiness and age, not just in the United States but around the world. Collecting data from 132 countries, Blanchflower finds the same pattern again and again. “No ifs, no buts,” says Blanchflower, “well-being is U-shaped in age.” The same U-shape occurs in developing and developed countries, in Europe and the United States, where English is spoken and where it isn’t. In short, the U-shape of happiness appears to be a universal truth. The happiness curve is no myth, Blanchflower concludes in his National Bureau of Economic Research paper: Is Happiness U-Shaped Everywhere? Age and Subjective Well-Being in 132 Countries.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic wand that will help us tunnel through the hill of unhappiness. But it does get better. After the midlife slump, well-being begins to rise. The happiness of the old nearly equals the happiness of the young.
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I APRIL 2020
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The Average American Is Plus-Sized
New sizes are opening a big market aybe you’ve noticed, but there are
pounds today, up from 166 in 1960. We know
many more plus-sized models in
this because the federal government regularly
clothing catalogs nowadays than
measures the height and weight of a represen-
there used to be. There’s a rea-
tative sample of the public to determine body
son for that. Apparel retailers are looking for
mass index. According to the latest measure-
ways to goose sales. As anyone who follows
ments, 71 percent of Americans aged 20 or old-
1960-62 to 2015-16
business news knows, the apparel industry
er are overweight (body mass index of 25.0 or
(in pounds)
has been struggling, with many retailers going
higher) and 42 percent are obese (body mass
bankrupt in the past few years. Sales are sput-
index of 30.0 or higher).
Weight of men and women aged 20 or older,
tering because Americans are spending less on clothes. Cheaper imports, the expansion of casual Fridays to every day of the week, and
MEN
the Great Recession all conspired to cut aver-
2015-2016 197.9
cent between 2006 and the post-Great Reces-
1999-2000 189.4
age household spending on clothes by 26 persion low of 2013, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’
173.8
Consumer Expenditure Survey. While apparel
1960-1962 166.3
never returned to its pre-Great Recession level.
1976-1980
spending increased between 2013 and 2015, it Then the decline resumed. Between 2015 and
2015-2016 170.6 1999-2000 163.6
nesses are finding it profitable to cater to the growing girth of Americans. Bariatric furniture—designed for the comfort and safety of the obese—is now commonplace in health care facilities. Plus-sized mannequins are showing up more frequently in retail store displays. Even Disney World offers plus-sized seats on many of its rides. When it comes to accommodating increasingly large customers, the airline industry appears to be one of the few laggards.
2018, average household spending on apparel
The average women today wears a Misses size
fell by another 5 percent.
16 to 18, the equivalent of a Women’s Plus-size
There’s also another reason for the apparel in-
WOMEN
With so many plus-sized customers, busi-
dustry’s struggles—a disconnect between potential customers and products. The industry has been slow to adapt to the growing dimensions of American men and women. But that’s beginning to change. In an attempt to attract
1976-1980 145.4
more customers, the apparel industry has be-
1960-1962 140.2
Americans.
gun to use models who look more like average
20W, according to a study in the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education. This fact explains the many plus-sized models in today’s clothing catalogs. Apparel retailers are hoping bigger models will entice more customers to buy their clothes, and it might be working. The plus-size women’s clothing market is growing twice as fast as the total clothing market, according to a Coresight Research study. “Women who wear plus sizes
Note: Data for 1960-62 and 1976-80
What do average Americans look like? For start-
underspend on apparel relative to their propor-
are for people aged 20 to 74.
ers, they are overweight. The average woman
tion of the US population,” the study concludes.
Source: National Center for Health
weighs 171 pounds today. In 1960, she weighed
“More retailers and brands are likely to prioritize
140 pounds. The average man weighs 198
this consumer segment in coming years.”
Statistics, National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys
14
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS I APRIL 2020
The average age for women to have theirfirst child is now 27 in California. Nationally, the CDC recently reported that the fertility rate—the number of babies the average woman will have in her lifetime— hit a record low of 1.7 in 2018. Despite the slowing birth rate, California is still expected to hit 50 million in population before the year 2060, attributed mostly to immigration and migration. About a quarter of the state’s population is made up of immigrants.
Talk Policy to Me Podcast (2019) Talk Policy to Me is a podcast from by the University of California’s Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans. In a series of episodes this year the podcast looked at how demographics affect policy decisions. The six-episode series (Episodes 307 through 312, available at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/ podcast/episode-307-talking-demography) has a particular focus on California demographics, while noting that the state has an oversized influence on the country as a whole. The first episode leads off with several news clips illustrating how California, as the country’s most populous state, as well as one of its most forward-thinking and innovative, is often a testing ground for policymaking in the US. Indeed, California has led the nation in driving policies centered around fuel emission standards, solar panels mandates, requirements to include women on the board of publicly traded companies, Internet consumer privacy protection and other measures. The lead episode sets the stage for the series by pointing out several demographic trends that California has experienced and how these trends have either mirrored or been predictive of trends nationwide. California’s birth rate, for example, has dropped significantly since 1970, much like it has in the rest of the country.
According to the podcast, about 70% of the state was white in 1970, and in 2018 it was 40 percent. Driving the diversity trend are the Latinx population, followed by the Asian-American Pacific Islander group, and those who identify in two or more groups. The US as a whole is also seeing these changes. In 1970, minorities made up 16.5% of the US population. In 2020, it’s estimated that minorities are now about 40% of the population. By 2045, the Census predicts that the country will become “minority white.” The Pew Research Center reported that 109 counties in 22 states became minority white between 2000 and 2018. The podcast also notes changes in aging and the workforce (9% of the state was 65+ in 1970 but it was close to 15% in 2018) and housing (about 95% of the state lives in urban areas, compared to 80% for the rest of the country). Subsequent episodes tackle specific demographic topics and how policy has affected or can change them. The second
episode of the series, “Talking Fertility: Debunking Population Growth Myths,” discusses birth rates, fertility rates, replacement rates and whether the way everything has been trending is necessarily bad. One reason that the average age for women having their first child has risen is because the teen birth rate has halved since 1991, to an all-time low, according to the CDC. The change in use of contraception and the kind of contraception available, much of which became free for many women under Obamacare, has had a big impact on this. In the series’ third and fourth episodes, the podcast tackles the aging population. The over 65 crowd in both California and the overall US are projected to be 20% of each’s population by 2030. California’s over 65 crowd in particular is the state’s fastest-growing age group. Of particular concern in this episode is how many Americans rely on an unpaid or underpaid workforce of direct care workers, a group that is disproportionately made up of women, people of color, immigrants, and other parts of the population often underserved by policymakers. Another concern for policymakers is making sure that the transportation needs of seniors are adequately met. The fifth episode looks at diversity in education. While about half of the population in US public schools are students of color, teachers of color make up just 18% of the workforce. The podcast hosts and guests wonder what effect that might have on a student of color’s learning, describes how policies developed in the name of desegregation have adversely affected teacher diversity, and suggests solutions to help reverse the trend. Do demographers think in terms of how better understanding of long-term trends can be used to influence public policy decisions? In the sixth and final episode the series concludes with a discussion about different approaches demographers and policymakers might take toward working together in the future.
AMERICANDEMOGRAPHICS.COM I APRIL 2020
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Month by Month at a Glance
AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS Census Day and Counting (April)
Who Are “The Influencers?” (March)
The Mystery of Algorithms (May)
Welcome to the World of Labor Shortages (February)
Today’s Workforce Tomorrow (June)
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