The US Census Bureau thread

[memph]

Detroit built quite a lot of housing in the 1950s too.

Changed in households

1940-1950


1950-1960


1960-1970


1970-1980


1980-1990


1990-2000


2000-2010

[memph]

Population losses of around 30% due to declining household sizes/combining of smaller units into larger ones is not much of a big deal. Montreal's plateau experienced a 47% decline from 1951-2011 and I'm not sure the built density decreased at all. (the area with a 69% decline did experience urban renewal projects)


Here's Toronto - I couldn't find 1951 census tract data when I made the map so this is 1956-2011.


More Ontario cities here
http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.co...1956-2011.html

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ yeah, that's all part of it, but what's weird is that, as of census 2020, the city of chicago's % of children is not radically out of line with the national average:

chicago under 18's: 20.9%

US under 18's: 22.2%


maybe chicago's % of under 18's was considerably higher than the national average in the past?

The numbers don't suggest that at all. In 1950 Chicago apparently had below-average household sizes per the list.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mhays

The numbers don't suggest that at all. In 1950 Chicago apparently had below-average household sizes per the list.

well, i was just spit balling because things don't appear to be adding up.

locally we've been hearing for a long time that the city of chicago is losing children. CPS even closed 50 freaking schools a number of years ago due to plummeting enrollment, and CPS enrollment numbers continue to drop year after, and yet chicago's % of under 18's isn't really all that out of line with the national average, only 1.3 points lower, a far cry from a situation like SF where under 18's are 8.8 points below the national average.

so i'm just trying to make sense of it all.

[mhays]

Ok, but the national average has also reduced over the years, pretty dramatically.

[Yuri]

We've discussed a lot about the success of the big 4 MSAs in Texas and how they keep growing fast decade after decade. The state, however, seems to be slowing down much faster:

1990 --- 16,986,510

2000 --- 20,851,820 --- 22.8%

2010 --- 25,145,561 --- 20.6%

2020 --- 29,145,505 --- 15.9%

I haven't looked closer, but it suggests Western Texas dropped quickly, and much of it is already post negative growth. The Mexican border areas (McAllen, Brownsville) although still growing, the rates collapsed compared to the previous decades.

Texas will be more and more those 4 MSAs. Everything else will be irrelevant.

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

well, i was just spit balling because things don't appear to be adding up.

locally we've been hearing for a long time that the city of chicago is losing children. CPS even closed 50 freaking schools a number of years ago due to plummeting enrollment, and CPS enrollment numbers continue to drop year after, and yet chicago's % of under 18's isn't really all that out of line with the national average, only 1.3 points lower, a far cry from a situation like SF where under 18's are 8.8 points below the national average.

so i'm just trying to make sense of it all.

I’m thinking there was a huge imbalance between different parts of the city in the past that made the overall average low.

Suppose North side household sizes were more or less the same as today (perhaps even smaller) with more white couples and retirees than families. But the South and West sides were horrendously overcrowded with families.

And no matter how much was built in the Loop and North side, it couldn’t overcome the depopulation of the South.

Today, there is not a different family living in every single room of a building in the poor areas of the city, and we’ll hopefully never see that again in our lifetimes.



1950 U.S. Household Size: 3.54
1950 Chicago Household Size: 3.19

https://youtu.be/Mthwoftflvc

[Yuri]

Somewhat related:

Number of births keeps going doing in 2021:

------------ Births -------- Deaths ------- Surplus ---- Fertility Rate
2000 --- 4,058,814 --- 2,403,351 --- 1,655,463 ------ 2.06
2007 --- 4,316,234 --- 2,423,712 --- 1,892,522 ------ 2.12
2010 --- 3,999,386 --- 2,468,435 --- 1,530,951 ------ 1.93
2015 --- 3,978,497 --- 2,712,630 --- 1,265,867 ------ 1.84
2019 --- 3,747,540 --- 2,854,858 ----- 892,682 ------ 1.71
2020 --- 3,605,201 --- 3,390,025 ----- 215,176 ------ 1.64
2021 --- 1,746,000 --- 1,671,000 ------ 75,000 ------ (Jan-Jun)

It's impressive how fast the natural growth collapsed. From almost 1.9 million in 2007 to close to zero in 2020-2021.

[subterranean]

Late stage capitalism.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by subterranean

Late stage capitalism.

And an almost thoroughly bungled response to a global pandemic.

[Yuri]

There are lots of things going on there:

- Covid was the biggest demographic event on US demographic history since Civil War. 750k excess-deaths in mere 18 months;

- Life expectancy in the US pretty much stopped to increase. Number of overdoses has grown fast in the past two decades. The always growing curve of deaths is a natural thing, but the number jumped way too fast since 2010;

- Baby boomers will start to die off en masse by 2030. It will become almost impossible for the US to post positive natural growth then;

- Births and fertility rates. I guess that's the main issue here. Fertility rate (and births as consequence) dropped like a rock between 2007-2020. There's clearly a massive changing on attitudes regarding children. In 2007, the oldest Millenials were starting to have their children and as 2020 all Millenials are at child bearing age. I guess we can safely say now US Millenials are completely different from Xs and Boomers in this regard.

[mhays]

The Covid-era birth trend is interesting to watch. Generally we see things a year late...nine months plus a few months for reporting. Some places don't seem to report monthlies, only year-ends much later.

Based on some examples, there was a significant drop in births conceived right after Covid shut things down. But similar examples show a recovery a few months later. There might not really be a big Covid baby bust.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by mhays

The Covid-era birth trend is interesting to watch. Generally we see things a year late...nine months plus a few months for reporting. Some places don't seem to report monthlies, only year-ends much later.

Based on some examples, there was a significant drop in births conceived right after Covid shut things down. But similar examples show a recovery a few months later. There might not really be a big Covid baby bust.

There were lots of articles during the first wave about a baby burst followed by a baby boom. It doesn't seem neither of those things happened/will happen. When it comes to births, there's no noticeable new trend. What we have is the continues collapse on births starting in the mid-2010's in most of the globe.

I have this sample for Brazil:

3Q/2019: 708,254
3Q/2020: 678,454
3Q/2021: 650,769

There will probably some delayed registers for September adding up, but 2021 will most likely not surpass 2020, let alone coming close to 2019 that was already a low number. Those children (born on 3Q/2021) were conceived between the two waves when people had already experienced the first and a more strict lockdown.

I've observed the same pattern in Europe and East Asia, with 2021 numbers just slightly below 2020.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Yuri

- Births and fertility rates. I guess that's the main issue here. Fertility rate (and births as consequence) dropped like a rock between 2007-2020. There's clearly a massive changing on attitudes regarding children. In 2007, the oldest Millenials were starting to have their children and as 2020 all Millenials are at child bearing age. I guess we can safely say now US Millenials are completely different from Xs and Boomers in this regard.

This has been a long time coming, and there have been countless articles about Millennials not having kids, being the the first generation to be worse off than their parents, etc. Doesn't help that childcare costs are soaring.

The oldest Millennials are also turning 40 this year, so the clock is quite literally ticking.

[Crawford]

U.S. births have fallen off a cliff. We're Europe, demographically.

Which means we need much more immigration. Time to open up immigration, at least to Germany levels, but ideally more to Canada levels.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

U.S. births have fallen off a cliff. We're Europe, demographically.

Which means we need much more immigration. Time to open up immigration, at least to Germany levels, but ideally more to Canada levels.

Always surprised at the number of people who seem to sincerely believe the drop in number of kids has something to do with lack of economic opportunity/the expense of having kids. As if lack of economic opportunity was ever associated with having few children.

[Crawford]

I think, among middle and upper income cohorts, time is probably the biggest constraint on greater fertility. Parents feel overwhelmed, and this is exacerbated by Covid. Kids are raised different now, with intense, hyperinvolved parenting, very different from the free range parenting I remember from the 80's and 90's.

For working class and low income cohorts, lower fertility is probably more attributed to better family planning and broader choices for women.

One interesting tidbit is that the share of women who bear children hasn't budged; just the amount. This suggests that women are as eager as ever to be mothers.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think, among middle and upper income cohorts, time is probably the biggest constraint on greater fertility.

And not just the time it takes to parent a child, but also running out of time because so many people are settling down and getting married later in life. My wife was 35 when she gave birth to our first kid, then we snuck in another one 18 months later. once we were reasonably sure they were both relatively healthy, I promptly got snipped. We had no interest in rolling the birth defect dice a third time with an even older mom at that point.

Back when people routinely got hitched in their late teens/early 20s, they had a couple decades to crank out a whole litter of kids, not just a handful of years as is now often the case with people getting married in their 30s and expiring biological clocks/infertility issues start heavily factoring in.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think, among middle and upper income cohorts, time is probably the biggest constraint on greater fertility. Parents feel overwhelmed, and this is exacerbated by Covid. Kids are raised different now, with intense, hyperinvolved parenting, very different from the free range parenting I remember from the 80's and 90's.

For working class and low income cohorts, lower fertility is probably more attributed to better family planning and broader choices for women.

One interesting tidbit is that the share of women who bear children hasn't budged; just the amount. This suggests that women are as eager as ever to be mothers.

I think a lot of it actually has to do with conformity within peer groups. People pick up a signal on when it's acceptable to have kids based upon when their peers have kids. So a highly-educated woman will feel the time "isn't right" until she has friends and coworkers around the same age who are popping them out. This can end up incredibly twisted in say academia, where the norm is you're supposed to wait until you achieve tenure to have a child - at which point you're probably over 40 and might not be able to conceive at all any longer.

[benp]

While there may be varied individual causes, dropping fertility rates is a global phenomenon, in rich and poor countries alike. I see the phenomenon as nature's adjusting to the spike in birth rates over the last two centuries and the accompanying increase in longevity, and that humans have somehow approached or passed some tipping point in that balance.

The global fertility rate is now 2.3 births/woman in 2021. In 1990 it was 3.2, and in 1950 it was 4.7. The replacement rate is considered to be 2.1.