Recent Demographic Trends and the Family
Title
Recent Demographic Trends and the Family
Author
Wu, Lawrence L.
Research Area
Social Institutions
Topic
Marriage and the Family
Abstract
For demographers, perhaps the most stunning set of changes in the family to have emerged over the last century are changes that drove what appeared to have been exploding populations, both in the world at large as well as in individual countries, to changes that now raise the distinct possibility of future population decline in a non‐negligible number of nations. These changes are in turn intimately connected to profound changes in family life and most particularly in fertility—trends in how many women, on average, remain childless over their lifetimes, and for those women who become mothers, how many births they will have. What is especially intriguing is “American exceptionalism”—that the United States appears to have been largely immune, at least to date, from demographic trends that are so pronounced and potentially worrisome in so many other advanced industrialized nations. I review what lies behind the shift from exploding populations to the possibility of population decline in at least some parts of the world, and then speculate on what may be the likely sources of why the United States has been an exception to these trends. This then leads me to highly speculative remarks about why two specific groups very often seen in a negative light—immigrants and women who give birth outside of formal marriage—have played an important role in American demographic exceptionalism, and why these groups may likewise continue to be a major factor in why the future of the United States may be far rosier than that of other advanced industrialized nations. However, I caution that this optimistic scenario depends crucially on realizing the social, economic, and demographic potential of these subpopulations.