Readers of WLJ know that the western states are growing in population (see the WLJ March 12, 2021, issue). High real estate values seen in the WLJ Properties magazine reflect this as investors and people looking to move to the West are creating high demand for land. As Mark Twain said, “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”
The big cities in the U.S. are crowded and getting more so. Traffic is growing along with the number of people. Even smaller towns, like Bozeman, MT, where I live, are getting bigger with frustrating traffic. I think many of us agree that crowded cities and heavy traffic are not desirable.
How many people are there and how fast are they increasing in number? I researched the numbers of people in the U.S. and the world on the U.S. Census Bureau website. These numbers are not exact and are based on computer models with some uncertainty, but they’re the best available at this time.
I checked the Census numbers three times this year:
• Jan. 11 — U.S. population: 334,266,871, world population: 7,944,739,880.
• July 18 — U.S. population: 335,089,880, world population: 7,982,832,010.
• Sept. 7 — U.S. population: 335,376,874, world population: 7,996,169,920.
The U.S. population increased by more than 1 million people (1,110,003) in about 8 months between January and September, or about 139,000 people per month. The world population increased by about 51 million people (51,430,040), or about 6,430,000 people per month between January and September. So, the U.S. population is more than 335 million and the world population is approaching 8 billion.
The Census website provided additional data for September 2023 in the U.S. There’s one birth every 8 seconds, and one international migrant every 31 seconds. That’s about one migrant per four births. There’s also one death every 11 seconds, and a net gain of one person every 15 seconds.
They don’t say if the number of migrants includes unauthorized immigrants or not, but there were an estimated 11,390,000 unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2018. With a 2018 population of 327,170,000 and 11,390,000 unauthorized immigrants, approximately 3.5% of the U.S. population was unauthorized immigrants in 2018.
I also obtained the Census numbers for 1900 through September 2023 that show the U.S. population growth over the last 123 years (see the graph). The straight black line in the graph is the best-fit straight line of the data from which the equation in the graph is derived. Using this equation and assuming the future rate of population growth will be the same as from 1900 to 2023, I predicted the population number for the year 2050.
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Using 2050 as X in the equation, the predicted number of people in the U.S. in 2050, Y, is 384,710,000. The Census Bureau website has a projection of 388,922,000 people in 2050. My estimate is 4,212,000 less than the Census projection, which was done with different and complex computations. In any event, the U.S. will be approaching 400 million people by the midcentury.
The U.S. currently has the third largest population in the world, behind China and India, each with more than 1 billion people. The Census data show the U.S. population is continuing to grow. Fertility and birth rates vary widely in different countries, and the U.S. has a relatively low birth rate but a high immigration rate. In 2020 there were more than 40 million immigrants living in the U.S. that comprised about 14% of the population, so immigration is contributing to population growth.
An increasing population might be good for agriculture markets and labor supply, but is also a primary contributor to environmental impacts, including greenhouse gasses, climate change and the loss of wide-open spaces that are valued by people in agriculture as well as by environmentalists.
I think the size of the U.S. population and its impact on the availability and accessibility of land is an important topic for people in agriculture and environmentalists to consider. After all, many places are getting overcrowded, agriculture needs land to operate, and environmentalists and all Americans need land on which to live, work and recreate. I don’t want more regulations (we have way too many already), except for the only aspect of our population the government is authorized to regulate: immigration. We have laws about immigration, how many immigrants we allow, and what’s legal and illegal immigration. Maybe a discussion on this topic will show that people in agriculture and environmentalists have a common goal of regulating immigration, legal and illegal, according to our laws. — Dr. Matthew Cronin
(Matthew A. Cronin is a scientist with Northwest Biology Company LLC in Bozeman, MT. He can be contacted at croninm@aol.com.)
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