Population growth in the US records its lowest rate since the founding of the country

Photo: JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP / Getty Images

Official figures recently released show another of the effects of the pandemic : During the first year of it, population growth in the United States fell to its lowest rate since the country was founded.

The fact that the spread of the coronavirus reduced immigration , led to the decision to postpone the pregnancies and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

July from 2020 to July 2021, the population in the country grew by just 1% ; They were added 392,665 people , to total 331. 8 million. Since 1937, is the first time that the country’s population has grown less of a million inhabitants.

The estimate was published by the Census Bureau.

Although the trend of a slow population growth in the United States takes years , the pandemic exacerbated it.

“Most of this is because of the covid- 19, but not all. The natural rise of the United States was already at a low point before the covid – 19, with the fertility rate reaching a new record every year, and deaths constantly increasing due to the aging of the population ”, considers the demographer of the University of New Hampshire Kenneth Johnson.

William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro, admitted to The Associated Press: “I was expecting low growth, but not that much. This tells us that the pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all sorts of ways , and now in demography. ”

It is not expected that the control of the pandemic, whenever this occurs, will not bring greater population growth, since there is a lower number of births . This emphasizes the need for younger workers to come to the country.

“T We have an aging population , and that means fewer women of childbearing age. We see that younger people postpone having children and are going to have fewer children, ”adds Frey.

And if young families are putting off arrival of children, or outright they are choosing not to have them, this may also be due to financial concerns, as highlighted by the professor at New York University and principal investigator of a study on motherhood in New York, Linda Kahn.

“ Women were much more affected during the pandemic : they lost their jobs in a greater proportion, or they had to leave them, often to help with homeschooling. The pressures on women were enormous and the United States really does not provide them with a safety net, “she said, quoted by AP.

In 33 states, between 2020 and 2021, demographics rose mainly due to internal migration; in 17 states and the District of Columbia dropped the number of residents.

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