Happy 300 Millionth, America. The More the Merrier?
A digital “clock” on the Census Bureau’s web site ticks up one number every 11 seconds. The nine-figure number represents the agency’s best guess at the number of people currently living in the United States. Taking into account that a child is born about every 7 seconds and someone dies every 13 seconds, and weighing other factors such as immigration and emigration, the government estimates the U.S. population currently stands at 299,988,650. Smarter people than me, or least people who have more time on their hands, have calculated that the number will reach 300 million early Tuesday morning Eastern Time.
Three hundred million is a nice, round number, though completely meaningless. The estimate is based on data from the 2000 census, and the census is accurate only to a point. Assuming that the experts aren’t way off base, the 300 millionth American may have been born last month, or he or she may cross the Rio Grande two weeks from now. It doesn’t really matter if the actual U.S. population is 290 million, 320 million or somewhere in between. The point is it’s a heck of a lot of people… and growing.
The U.S. population is growing faster than other industrialized nations. With birth rates hovering right around replacement levels (meaning the birth rate is about equal to the death rate), and tight immigration controls, most Western European countries’ populations are holding steady.
Right about here is where some American pundits launch into the familiar tirade against immigration.
Immigration accounts for 40 percent of U.S. population growth. The other 60 percent is attributed to children born in the country, and many of these are born to immigrant parents. In effect, immigration accounts for pretty much all of U.S. population growth.
I won't bother commenting on the common, and xenophobic, complaints about altering the nation’s cultural identity. But I can appreciate the concerns of those who fear the ecological consequences of all this growth. More people equal more pollution. And as more economic migrants move to the cities, more families will seek the space and quiet of suburbia. More wild places will be tamed into tidy subdivisions and paved over with cul-de-sacs. In other words, more of nature will be given over to suburban sprawl.
I take a world view on this. Whether in the United States, in their countries of origin or elsewhere, people will be a tax on the environment. To argue for keeping them out of the United States on environmental grounds, is to argue that one patch of Earth is more sacred than another.
The government isn’t going to halt immigration any time soon. That’s because the economic benefits of this influx of human capital are clear. Germany and Japan face the threat that their populations could soon begin to decline, and the economic implications are dire. As their people age and retire, there will be too few working-age Germans and Japanese to support the pensioners. Meanwhile, the US economy continues to grow on the backs of immigrants, who are almost entirely of a working age.
The United States population is well over half that of all of the members of the European Union combined. But it is a dwarf beside China and India at 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectively. Even with an accelerating growth rate – the population is expected to reach 400 million in just 37 years – it will take quite some time for the United States to catch up to these two demographic goliaths. But there is one key area in which the United States beats China, India and the rest of the world: consumption.
The average American consumes 30 times as much energy each day as the average Indian, 13 times as much as the average Chinese and more than twice as much as the average Japanese. The United States consumes more oil, more electricity, more water, more paper and more metals than any other country.
A second ticker on the Census Bureau’s website tallies the population of the entire world. Currently it's just over 6.5 billion. With a little basic arithmetic, we can determine that Americans make up less than five percent of the world’s population. Basically one-twentieth of the world’s people consume a massive chuck of its resources, by some estimates 40 percent.
And that’s not all. Americans consume 60 percent of the world’s illegal drugs. They drink more coffee and eat more ice cream (and everything else) than any other nation. Americans take more dietary supplements than ever before. They produce nearly three-quarters of the planet’s toxic waste.
Besides the several cars in their driveways and rows of designer shoes in their closets, Americans have little to show for all their consumerism. The number of self-help tomes on bookstore shelves provides anecdotal evidence, but there is a growing stack scientific data confirming that happiness cannot be bought.
For more than two decades, the University of Michigan has been asking people all over the world how happy they are, on a scale of one to five. Happiologists consider Michigan’s “World Values Survey” to be the most reliable scientific narrative of global gladness.
I’m sure you’ve surmised that the United States does not top Michigan’s list of happiest countries. In 2002 the university released only the top five countries. The United States is nowhere on that short list. Given ten guesses, I doubt many people would guess that the country whose citizens described themselves as happiest is, in fact, Nigeria.
The CIA World Factbook reports Nigeria’s per capita GDP was $1400 in 2005, compared to a U.S. per capita GDP of $41,800. That means that for each person, Nigeria’s economy produced one-thirtieth the wealth created by the US economy. Sixty percent of Nigerians live below the official poverty level. Many Nigerians can’t afford multiple pairs of shoes, let alone Jimmy Choos. Yet Nigerians are happier than Americans.
Mexico ranks second on the happiest countries list, followed by Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico.
By just asking people whether they are happy, you run the risk of getting results skewed by individuals’ immediate moods and their cultural ideas about admitting or denying one’s happiness. So the survey goes a step further and asks each participant to think about his or her life as a whole and report his or her general satisfaction with it. Here Nigeria drops down to 19, but the United States is only four spots ahead of it at 15. At the top of the list are Puerto Rico, Mexico, Denmark, Colombia and Ireland.
All of the shopping on Madison Avenue and Rodeo Drive doesn’t appear able to raise America’s happiness quotient. Perhaps the answer is to reshape immigration policy to admit more people from the happiest countries.
That brings us back to the people who complain that there isn’t enough room in America for the next 100 million. To the extent that an increasing population puts a strain on resources, immigration may indeed be a serious problem, particularly if the new arrivals succeed in fully assimilating into American culture. That is, if they grow into AC-dependant, SUV-driving, mall-trolling, burger-chomping, big-gulping, garbage-producing couch potatoes.
sources:
Census Bureau population clock
World Values Survey
CIA Factbook on Nigeria
CIA Factbook on the United States
necessaryprose.com
thehappinessshow.com
biopsychiatry.com
tags: 300 Million, U.S. Population, environment, pollutionn, immigration, happiness
A digital “clock” on the Census Bureau’s web site ticks up one number every 11 seconds. The nine-figure number represents the agency’s best guess at the number of people currently living in the United States. Taking into account that a child is born about every 7 seconds and someone dies every 13 seconds, and weighing other factors such as immigration and emigration, the government estimates the U.S. population currently stands at 299,988,650. Smarter people than me, or least people who have more time on their hands, have calculated that the number will reach 300 million early Tuesday morning Eastern Time.
Three hundred million is a nice, round number, though completely meaningless. The estimate is based on data from the 2000 census, and the census is accurate only to a point. Assuming that the experts aren’t way off base, the 300 millionth American may have been born last month, or he or she may cross the Rio Grande two weeks from now. It doesn’t really matter if the actual U.S. population is 290 million, 320 million or somewhere in between. The point is it’s a heck of a lot of people… and growing.
The U.S. population is growing faster than other industrialized nations. With birth rates hovering right around replacement levels (meaning the birth rate is about equal to the death rate), and tight immigration controls, most Western European countries’ populations are holding steady.
Right about here is where some American pundits launch into the familiar tirade against immigration.
Immigration accounts for 40 percent of U.S. population growth. The other 60 percent is attributed to children born in the country, and many of these are born to immigrant parents. In effect, immigration accounts for pretty much all of U.S. population growth.
I won't bother commenting on the common, and xenophobic, complaints about altering the nation’s cultural identity. But I can appreciate the concerns of those who fear the ecological consequences of all this growth. More people equal more pollution. And as more economic migrants move to the cities, more families will seek the space and quiet of suburbia. More wild places will be tamed into tidy subdivisions and paved over with cul-de-sacs. In other words, more of nature will be given over to suburban sprawl.
I take a world view on this. Whether in the United States, in their countries of origin or elsewhere, people will be a tax on the environment. To argue for keeping them out of the United States on environmental grounds, is to argue that one patch of Earth is more sacred than another.
The government isn’t going to halt immigration any time soon. That’s because the economic benefits of this influx of human capital are clear. Germany and Japan face the threat that their populations could soon begin to decline, and the economic implications are dire. As their people age and retire, there will be too few working-age Germans and Japanese to support the pensioners. Meanwhile, the US economy continues to grow on the backs of immigrants, who are almost entirely of a working age.
The United States population is well over half that of all of the members of the European Union combined. But it is a dwarf beside China and India at 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectively. Even with an accelerating growth rate – the population is expected to reach 400 million in just 37 years – it will take quite some time for the United States to catch up to these two demographic goliaths. But there is one key area in which the United States beats China, India and the rest of the world: consumption.
The average American consumes 30 times as much energy each day as the average Indian, 13 times as much as the average Chinese and more than twice as much as the average Japanese. The United States consumes more oil, more electricity, more water, more paper and more metals than any other country.
A second ticker on the Census Bureau’s website tallies the population of the entire world. Currently it's just over 6.5 billion. With a little basic arithmetic, we can determine that Americans make up less than five percent of the world’s population. Basically one-twentieth of the world’s people consume a massive chuck of its resources, by some estimates 40 percent.
And that’s not all. Americans consume 60 percent of the world’s illegal drugs. They drink more coffee and eat more ice cream (and everything else) than any other nation. Americans take more dietary supplements than ever before. They produce nearly three-quarters of the planet’s toxic waste.
Besides the several cars in their driveways and rows of designer shoes in their closets, Americans have little to show for all their consumerism. The number of self-help tomes on bookstore shelves provides anecdotal evidence, but there is a growing stack scientific data confirming that happiness cannot be bought.
For more than two decades, the University of Michigan has been asking people all over the world how happy they are, on a scale of one to five. Happiologists consider Michigan’s “World Values Survey” to be the most reliable scientific narrative of global gladness.
I’m sure you’ve surmised that the United States does not top Michigan’s list of happiest countries. In 2002 the university released only the top five countries. The United States is nowhere on that short list. Given ten guesses, I doubt many people would guess that the country whose citizens described themselves as happiest is, in fact, Nigeria.
The CIA World Factbook reports Nigeria’s per capita GDP was $1400 in 2005, compared to a U.S. per capita GDP of $41,800. That means that for each person, Nigeria’s economy produced one-thirtieth the wealth created by the US economy. Sixty percent of Nigerians live below the official poverty level. Many Nigerians can’t afford multiple pairs of shoes, let alone Jimmy Choos. Yet Nigerians are happier than Americans.
Mexico ranks second on the happiest countries list, followed by Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico.
By just asking people whether they are happy, you run the risk of getting results skewed by individuals’ immediate moods and their cultural ideas about admitting or denying one’s happiness. So the survey goes a step further and asks each participant to think about his or her life as a whole and report his or her general satisfaction with it. Here Nigeria drops down to 19, but the United States is only four spots ahead of it at 15. At the top of the list are Puerto Rico, Mexico, Denmark, Colombia and Ireland.
All of the shopping on Madison Avenue and Rodeo Drive doesn’t appear able to raise America’s happiness quotient. Perhaps the answer is to reshape immigration policy to admit more people from the happiest countries.
That brings us back to the people who complain that there isn’t enough room in America for the next 100 million. To the extent that an increasing population puts a strain on resources, immigration may indeed be a serious problem, particularly if the new arrivals succeed in fully assimilating into American culture. That is, if they grow into AC-dependant, SUV-driving, mall-trolling, burger-chomping, big-gulping, garbage-producing couch potatoes.
sources:
Census Bureau population clock
World Values Survey
CIA Factbook on Nigeria
CIA Factbook on the United States
necessaryprose.com
thehappinessshow.com
biopsychiatry.com
tags: 300 Million, U.S. Population, environment, pollutionn, immigration, happiness
posted by citizenjane at 5:53 PM
1 Comments:
I woke up at six this morning for some reason. maybe it was because i sensed that 300millionth patriot.
"argue that one patch of Earth is more sacred than another" - Well, duh!
and how can ignore the Jimmy Choo reference. dunno 'bout you but she shopping sure as hell makes me happy. until i get the credit cards bills... but hey, a stiff drink and, tadaaaaaa! happy again!
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