Population Matters Policy Brief: Demographic Trends Foreshadow Major Economic and Social Challenges

摘要

The United States is experiencing fundamental demographic shifts. Birth rates have declined average family size has fallen, and people are living longer. Meanwhile, a large influx of immigrants and relatively higher birth rates among the Hispanic population are changing America's ethnic composition, pointing toward a time when no single group can claim ethnic-majority status. In A Demographic Perspective on Our Nation's Future, a documented briefing from RAND's Population Matters program, demographer Peter Morrison examines current population trends worldwide and in the United States, discusses implications for the United States, and explores public policy challenges these trends now pose. Morrison concludes that the main challenges are likely to include coping with a reduced workforce and growing elderly population, reducing inequalities and barriers to opportunity, and balancing the competing needs of different generations and ethnic groups. The trends offer opportunities, as well. For example, the emergence of an increasingly prosperous middle class in India and elsewhere could create substantial new markets for U.S. goods and services.