# US losing population **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 5, 2025, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904 "2025-05-05T12:38:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/41 "2025-05-09T21:13:30Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > And Trump has 5 You do have to factor in how many mothers (and how many other kids they have, too), when talking about replacement value. Also, of course, their age and what was typical for their respective generations. > [@](#): > > Not just the freedom to stay at home, but also the servants ensure the child-rearing does not become a drag on other social activities. Very true. And, of course, how much does that impact whether the servants are apt to have kids (or how many) v. other jobs. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/42 "2025-05-09T22:07:12Z")
Surprisingly, most of those top 12 US billionaires I listed had all their children with one wife. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2025, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/43 "2025-05-09T22:37:56Z")
More famous people with lots of kids: Alec Baldwin has seven kids with his second wife. Tori Spelling has five kids with one of her husbands. Jim Gaffigan has five kids with his wife. Jerry Hall has four kids. Stellan Skarsgård had six kids with one of his wives. Steven Spielberg has four children with one of his wives. Lauryn Hill has six kids. Kris Jenner has six kids. Mel Gibson has seven kids with one of his wives. James Van Der Beek and his wife have six kids. Gordon Ramsay and his wife have five kids These are all cases where a woman has a lot of kids. None of the kids were adopted, I believe. This are cases where just one woman has those kids. I’m not including other kids the husband or boyfriend had with other women. So it’s not just men having kids with many wives. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/44 "2025-05-11T17:28:40Z")
Media personality Kris Jenner has six children. Two of her daughters have four children, two have two, and her son has one. A total of 13 grandchildren. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/45 "2025-05-11T17:41:21Z")
> [@Tzigone](#): > > Very true. And, of course, how much does that impact whether the servants are apt to have kids (or how many) v. other jobs. That’s an interesting point. Often, the servants who care for kids don’t have their own. But of course, sometimes they do. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/46 "2025-05-11T17:42:32Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > So the top 12 people listed in Forbes as American billionaires, the ones over $100B, have (excluding #1) have 30 children between them - an average of 2.5, well over the \<2 for most of the USA. The average number of kids among those 12 is actually 3.7, but it’s completely skewed by Musk and his 14. Ten of the twelve have either 2 or 3, and the median is 3. Certainly more than the the national average, but not outrageously so, and it’s difficult (and probably erroneous) to make sweeping statements based on that kind of sample size. Yes, one can point to well-known examples of super-wealthy families with lots of kids, but even among the super-wealthy, they may well be exceptions to the norm. And, one could also point to lots of examples of middle-class and lower class families with a ton of kids, too. Certainly, the extremely wealthy likely have staff and servants who take care of things like childcare and housekeeping, but unless they are adopting, a large family would mean that the super-wealthy wife is spending much of her life in her 20s and 30s pregnant, and that may not be an attractive choice for many of them. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/47 "2025-05-11T17:53:28Z")
If you want to look at the wealthy, rather than the super-wealthy: For my college class, or those who responded to a survey (about a third of the class) 74% have kids Those who had kids averaged 2.3 Across the whole sample, the average was 1.7 The median and mode is 2 kids Median reported household income is \>250k, but enough people decline to answer that question that it might be biased, probably biased high. I’m not sure how to compare that to “annual birth rate per 1000 women”, but “number of kids in middle age” is a much more intuitive number than “births per year in this demographic”, although of course you can’t answer that question for young adults. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/48 "2025-05-11T18:56:36Z")
To be in the overall top 1% of income in the U.S., you must have an annual income of at least $787,712 according to the statistics in the article [Here's how much money you need to earn to join the top 1% in every U.S. state - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-1-percent-income-wealthy-what-you-need-to-earn-by-state/). Nobody is saying that the number of children is outrageously more than people below that level. It’s just that it’s more than 3. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/49 "2025-05-11T18:58:11Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Nobody is saying that the number of children is outrageously more than people below that level. @md-2000 certainly seems to be saying that “the ultra-rich have lots of kids.” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/50 "2025-05-11T19:13:17Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > not every rich person has a lot, but tend to be higher than average What he said in one post was that “not every rich person has a lot, but tend to be higher than average”, which I don’t think is like “have lots of kids”. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2025, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/51 "2025-05-14T15:49:10Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > So how does a declining population line up with a supposed housing crisis in the US? The two seem to be at odds with eachother In addition to what else has been said: a lot of places in some areas have been bought up for use as short term rentals, making them unavailable for use by anyone wanting to actually live in them. A lot more money can be made by renting a place by the night or week than can be made by renting it by the month on a year-long renewable lease. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2025, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/52 "2025-05-14T16:18:13Z")
Decreasing household size (number of people) means more people are competing for houses/units. It’s how cities/neighborhoods can maintain full occupancy while population still declines. Also, increasing home size (square feet, number of bedrooms, etc.) makes a lot of housing unaffordable to the larger number of single-income buyers. The other problem is housing availability where jobs are. We’ve gotten to a point where cities of any meaningful size are adding jobs faster than they’re adding housing. The neighborhoods where people want housing are often already “built out” due to zoning and other development restrictions. Builders/developers would be fools not to cater to the high-end market in that situation when the high-end market is unsatisfied. They’re just responding rationally to the distorted market. I maintain a position that a lot of cities have reached “peak sprawl” where so much of the landscape is single-family detached homes and strip malls that it’s become too physically large and decoupled from the core city to viably grow much more due to talent/jobs/opportunities/networking/recreation getting too far apart and difficult to access. So the pressure on the real estate market is on closer-in neighborhoods that are already zoning-restricted, so with no chance to densify, prices just go up and up. Another facet of this is that a lot of boomers decanted to low-tax environs for retirement where they often vote against school levies and other services that younger people want/need. They’re not beholden to any sort of job market either, so the glut of boomer homes coming down the pipeline are not in places younger working-age people want to live, or could reasonably make a living in. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/53 "2025-09-03T16:50:02Z")
I’m not the only one who thinks the US population could decline this year: > **[The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever](https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-us-population-could-shrink-in)** > > It's a story with massive economic and political significance. But it's receiving strangely little attention. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/54 "2025-09-03T18:22:15Z")
I don’t much of anything new in that article. Immigration does complicate the issue; but everybody already knows that driving immigrants out of the country and limiting new ones is self-destructive idiocy that will be correctable by a new administration. Climate change will cause at least a billion people to move by the end of this century: that’s my forecast. Resistance to that mass emigration will be fierce, brutal, and also futile. Forecasts of future population without taking that into account are also futile. They shouldn’t be believed, nor even included in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/55 "2025-09-03T21:16:55Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I don’t much of anything new in that article. Yeah, it was just confirming what I said in the OP. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > driving immigrants out of the country and limiting new ones is self-destructive idiocy that will be correctable by a new administration. Don’t be so sure it’ll be that easily correctable. After 4 years of Trump, potential immigrants will have gotten the idea that the US is not the welcoming place it used to be. They’ll probably have found some other country that’s more accommodating. It’ll take a few years to change our image back. ---
**Author:** ![Zoobi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/13edae/32.png) [@Zoobi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoobi)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/56 "2025-09-03T21:20:27Z")
Plus it’s a coin flip if Republicans sweep back into power (assuming they relinquish it in the first place) for the next election cycle and try to kick everyone out again. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/57 "2025-09-03T21:30:36Z")
The real coin flip is whether, even if a Democrat is elected, they’ll act more like Obama or Biden: [![](https://econofact.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/web_watson_ICE_removals.png) ](https://econofact.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/web_watson_ICE_removals.png) Their electoral chances in a few years depends a great deal on the attitude they take. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/58 "2025-09-03T21:59:31Z")
I’ve watched what other countries are doing, especially in Europe. America in any other time has been more welcoming and will remain so in the future. Especially when all the farmers and factories and small businesses start screaming for more workers. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904/59 "2025-09-05T02:20:42Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Climate change will cause at least a billion people to move by the end of this century: that’s my forecast. It’s already happening. The migrations across the Mediterranean plus the arrivals to the USA on the Mexican border are attributed to some extent to crop failures due to drought and other natural disasters, as much as political problems and economic migration. But it’s only going to get worse. The difference is, the population in Latin America is levelling off, whereas the population growth in Africa is not showing any sign of reduction. Europe will be the main “beneficiary” more than the USA. Also, the economy is important. An economy in recession is less likely to attract the sort of legal immigrants that fill the more skilled jobs; depending on how the economy in the rest of the world compares. Short answer: who knows? Populations everywhere but Africa are generally levelling off and headed downward. Only immigration saves the countries that encourage it - USA, Canada, Australia, and to some extent NZ and UK. Countries like Japan and South Korea that don’t encourage immigration are heading into population decline already. So too most European countries, Russia, and China. Fun site: check out the different countries > **[Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100](https://www.populationpyramid.net/world/2025/)** > > WORLD - 2025 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-losing-population/1017904.md?page=2)