According to the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2021 Population Estimates, the U.S. population increased by only 0.1 percent, which is the slowest rate since the country’s founding.
The agency issued a statement where it claimed that the population of the U.S. has grown by less than one million people for the first time since 1937. The Census Bureau started their annual population estimates in 1900, and the current numbers mark the lowest numeric growth since then.
Apart from the previous few years, when population growth plummeted to historically low levels, the slowest pace of increase in the twentieth century happened between 1918 and 1919, when the influenza epidemic and World War I were both in full swing.
The agency believes that the main reasons for the current situation are decreasing fertility, growing mortality due to an older population, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Idaho’s population grew by 2.9 percent between 2020 and 2021, and that is the largest percentage rise in the country. The District of Columbia has experienced a steeper population decrease than any other state (-2.9 percent).
Other Census Bureau data point to troubling socioeconomic tendencies. For example, just 17.8% of the 130 million homes in the United States have married parents with children, compared to almost 40% in 1970.