Data released by the Census Bureau revealed that the median age of people in the United States has reached 38.9, the highest ever… which is raising questions about falling fertility rates in the United States and around the world.
In a press release, the Census Bureau explained that as people are getting older, birth rates are not high enough to offset the aging population.
“As the nation’s median age creeps closer to 40, you can really see how the aging of baby boomers, and now their children — sometimes called echo boomers — is impacting the median age. The eldest of the echo boomers have started to reach or exceed the nation’s median age of 38.9,” Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said. “While natural change nationally has been positive, as there have been more births than deaths, birth rates have gradually declined over the past two decades. Without a rapidly growing young population, the U.S. median age will likely continue its slow but steady rise.”
While four states — Alabama, Maine, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as well as Washington, D.C. — saw no change in their median age from 2021 to 2022, not a single state in the country had a decrease in age. The median age has drastically risen in the past few decades; in 1980, the median age was just 30.
“It’s simple arithmetic,” Andrew A. Beveridge, president of Social Explorer, a demographic data firm, told the New York Times. “Fewer kids are being born.”
Immigration has, in the past, helped offset the United States’ low birth rates, but immigration has slowed since 2016. And though the United States’ median age of 38.9 is not quite as high as that of Europe, which clocks in at 44, it’s continuing to steadily rise.
Currently, nearly half of the world’s countries are below replacement rate, meaning their populations are declining instead of growing.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk notably pointed out that low birth rates are a threat to overall civilization.
“I’m sort of worried that hey, civilization, if we don’t make enough people to at least sustain our numbers, perhaps increase a little bit, then civilization’s going to crumble,” he said. “The old question of like, will civilization end with a bang or a whimper? Well, it’s currently trying to end with a whimper in adult diapers, which is depressing as hell.”
