Recently, a group of friends photographed themselves in a photo called “Number 9”. 40 years ago a group of five friends from Santa Barbara, California, who were 19 years old at the time, started taking pictures of themselves in the same place and in the same pose and since then they have been doing it every five years. This is a group photo taken at Lake Copco in California, a series of photos that over time became very famous in the US. You can see how time ages them – as you can see it’s quite amazing and also quite disturbing. Over the years they have spread across the US. One of them is an elementary school teacher, one is a film producer, the third is a software engineer, the fourth is a photographer and the fifth manages an internet tourism website.
Reams of stories and background articles have been written about them in the US. This is a group of five white men from the American middle class. They belong to a group that has always been and still is the beating heart of the US. Many of the white men in the USA are excited and see in the series of photos their own coming. A representative group photo of people, which some of the delusional extreme left in the USA now call “privileged”.
I was interested in very specific information about them, which for some reason did not stand out to the eyes of any reporter and even editor on the websites, television and the written press, those who prominently published their story. The specific information that interested me was very simple: how many children do they have?
At the age of 49, at the time of “photo number 7”, only two of them were married. Today, at the age of 59, all five are married. Mazel Tov. But only one of them has a child and he is 8 years old. In Israel, if we were to randomly gather a group of five 59-year-old friends, they would probably have 10 to 12 children together, at least 10 times the number of births that this group of photographed people managed to “produce” over the years . This American group of friends is an extreme case, but they still represent the catastrophe in US demographic trends.
In two previous articles in which I reviewed the demographic trends in China “This is a dumb demographic” and in Europe “The demographic bomb of Europe”, I mentioned dozens of countries whose population is already starting to decrease. specifically, Population decline, especially in the 20- to 35-year-old group that starts families and is therefore the most important consumer group, is a key factor in long-term economic forecasts. I showed why China and the European Union are headed for economic catastrophe. But unfortunately, even the US is in trouble. The watershed there was probably the financial crisis of 2008. Until that crisis, the birth rate in the US managed to keep around the magic number of 2.1 children per woman, which guarantees the stability of the population size in the future.
Decline in birth rates is a worldwide phenomenon – far fewer children are born now than before. In most countries and throughout the western world without exception (except Israel) there is also less than the number of 2.1 children per woman, below which the population begins to decrease. The exceptions to the rule are the countries of the African continent and also where the birth rate is in sharp decline. This is certainly great news for the planet, but bad news for economic growth. The graph below shows the amazing picture and the trend continues:
Below is the average fertility level for a woman in several interesting countries, before the World Bank data for 2020:
USA 1.6, Russia 1.5, China 1.3, Germany 1.5, France 1.8, Canada 1.4, Sweden 1.7, UK 1.6, Italy 1.2, Japan 1.3, India 2.2, Brazil 1.7, Iran 2.1, Turkey 2.0, Egypt 3.2, Lebanon 2.0, Greece 1.3, and in Israel? 2.9 children per woman (you will be surprised to know that the high number is not because of the ultra-orthodox, but because of the secular. I will devote a follow-up article to Israel).
The white group in the US is going to become a minority in only about 25 years
The Americans compile statistics that divide into “races”: whites, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, Indians and “mixed”. The whites who founded the USA and in the distant past made up 85% and more make up 57% of the population today. In the beginning, as I remember, they killed parts of the native population (the Indians) who make up less than 1% today, otherwise the numbers from the beginning would have been different. The reason the USA is still in a demographic situation Good relative to Europe, thanks to the relatively high number of Hispanic and African-American minorities, although their numbers have recently been lower than 2.1 children per woman. In any case, the white group in the US is going to become a minority itself, in only about 25 years. Even now, white Americans under the age of 18 are a minority. 50 years ago Hispanics made up 5% of the US population, today it is almost 20%. They are reshaping national demographics as they account for about half of US population growth, a pattern that has continued since 2000.
In any case, it is already much less politically correct than before to make the distinctions between the “races” and today they try to tone it down, but the numbers exist. Many white Americans are still wary of the weight of the African-American population living in the neighborhood they are considering moving to. Don’t be confused by the American movies that often show what good friendship exists between the two “races” and how common interracial marriages are. It’s only in the movies. In most cases the distance between the groups of African Americans and the whites is strong and exists.
In any case, the discourse regarding equality in the US has always talked about the majority group – the whites, and the minority groups. For many years, the representatives of the minority groups, with an emphasis on the African Americans, have been waving the statistical flags that show the great socio-economic differences that exist between them and the whites, which the delusional extreme left In the US they are now called “the privileged”. Economically they are of course right. Although the average income of African Americans has improved significantly since the beginning of the equal civil rights era 58 years ago, it is still below the national average. The median income of black families is $27,000 a year less than the national median income. Is the fault only with the whites or is it somewhere in them as well? Just a hint in the direction – Americans of the Asian “race” which makes up 7% of the US population and is known to be discriminated against, were found to have the highest average incomes of all, including the whites.
What should be of particular interest to us is that for some time now all “racial” groups in the US have been giving birth less and this is going to hit the economy hard. This will happen because consumption volumes will decrease, this is because the relative weight of the 20 to 35 age group, the one that starts families and its consumption characteristics are The biggest ones are getting smaller, on the other hand the weight of the older age groups, those who consume less, is increasing.
Dr. Adam Reuter – Chairman of Hysonim Finance, Chairman of Hedgewiz, co-author of the book “Israel Story of Success”