USA TODAY: For two consecutive years since 2009, the population has grown just 0.7% a year, down from annual increases around 1% in previous years and the lowest since the late 1930s. The U.S. gained 2.2 million people from 2010 to 2011 — fewer than the 2.8 million added a decade earlier — reaching a total of 311.6 million.
“Almost anybody who observes these things over the years can say this is almost all recession-related,” says Carl Haub, demographer for the Population Reference Bureau…
The U.S. fertility rate — which has been close to the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman in contrast to many developed nations that are well below that level — now is estimated to have fallen to 1.9, says demographer Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division and more recently research director at the Center for Migration Studies… (more)
EDITOR: Less children mean less young adults to pay into social security and pay taxes to help support an already aging population. This leads to opening rather than closing our borders.