The Census Bureau has projected that whites could drop below 50 percent of the population around 2045, a relatively slow-moving change that has been years in the making. But a new report this week found that whites are dying faster than they are being born now in 26 states, up from 17 just two years earlier, and demographers say that shift might come even sooner.
“It’s happening a lot faster than we thought,” said Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a co-author of the report. It examines the period from 1999 to 2016 using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the federal agency that tracks births and deaths. He said he was so surprised at the finding that at first he thought it was a mistake.Other states subject to this trend include several won by Donald Trump in 2016: Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan ... as well as Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and the Carolinas. Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana and Texas are exceptions among southern states.
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The aging of the white population began in rural counties long before it ever took hold in an entire state. Martin County, a bear-shaped patch of eastern North Carolina, first experienced it in the late 1970s. In recent years, deaths have exceed births among its black population, too. Hispanics make up less than 4 percent of the county’s population.
Of interest elsewhere in the country is the fact that all of New England is experiencing more white deaths than births. Indeed, among states in the northeast, only New York is an exception to this trend. The Midwest--broadly defined--is the most persistently resistant to this trend.
The New York Times published this op-ed last month which analyzes the trend from a global perspective. The piece, by Philip Auerswald and Joon Yun, also discusses the political correlations to this demographic trend, in countries from Italy to Japan.
In the past decade people in rural, remote places have been disproportionately losing not just jobs and opportunities, but people, elementary schools and confidence in the future. ... Against such a backdrop of general decline, populists’ promises to revive dead or dying local industries are understandably welcome.
As youth have continued to migrate from rural areas to cities, their movement has widened not only the median age gap between rural places and cities, but also gaps in attitude, since the young, regardless of where they live, tend to associate more with urban outlooks.
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Election data from the past two years plainly describe the consequences of these demographic dynamics: Most advanced industrialized countries are dominated by two competing political movements that either awkwardly inhabit the bodies of existing political parties or create new ones more to their liking. One movement extols the values that are a practical necessity in dense, interconnected cities: interdependence, internationalism and the embrace of “diversity” (defined along multiple dimensions).
Another movement extols the equally necessary virtues of people in rural areas: self-reliance, autonomy and the embrace of immediate community and place.Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.
A frequent theme I have encountered in Democratic circles is that all we have to do to reclaim the South is play the waiting game. Eventually the demographics will change to the tipping point where people of color outnumber white voters and the South will fall into Democratic hands. In my opinion this narrative cheapens the value of not only the white working class people still living there, but also the rising population of mostly Latinos who are expected to carry the Democrats across the finish line. For the white working class, they are considered to be calcified racists and inevitable Republicans who cannot be won over. For the Latinos they are expected to be reliable Democrats who can continually have their interests pushed aside after the voting polls close, as Obama did when he punted on immigration. What purveyors of this narrative forget is that culture does not operate in a vacuum. The policies that appeal to rural folk today are likely to appeal to them tomorrow, even with demographic shifts. Waiting for the inevitable is a foolish strategy for growth, and more attention needs to be paid to the views of these communities regardless of the inevitability of demographic shifts.
ReplyDeleteYou make a great point, Nick. The political parties cannot assume that individuals - or even groups of people - will remain loyal to one side or the other simply because of the race of those voters. Racial-political associations have switched before. Historically, the Republican party - the "party of Lincoln" - had the loyalty of a large percentage of black voters, while the Democratic party received many votes from the white working class. It is clear that, as you argue, attention needs to be paid to people's views and not just their skin color.
ReplyDeleteHow is this best to be done? In the United States, it seems that the movements of rural interests and urban interests, as described in Philip Auerswald and Joon Yun's op-ed, quoted above, "awkwardly inhabit the bodies of existing political parties." Can the existing parties stay true to their identities and to other defining issues while still giving these rural/urban movements the voice and attention that they need? If not, how will these movements be given the expression they need, given that our political system seems averse to the creation of new parties?