United States population growth at lowest rate in pandemic’s 1st year

Highlights US grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to US population from July 2020 to July 2021 US has been experiencing slow population growth for years but the pandemic exacerbated that trend Once there’s a handle on pandemic, the U.S. may eventually see a decrease in deaths U.S. population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nation’s founding during the first year of the pandemic as the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies and killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents, according to figures released Tuesday. “It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.” Once there’s a handle on the pandemic, the U.S. may eventually see a decrease in deaths, but population growth likely won’t bounce back to what it has been in years past because of fewer births. “We see younger people putting off having children and they’re going to have fewer children.” The decision not to have children by young families may be driven by financial worries as much, if not more, than health concerns, said Linda Kahn, a professor at New York University and lead researcher in a study that showed that almost half of New York City mothers who had been trying to become pregnant before the pandemic began in the U.S. in March 2020 stopped in the first few months of the outbreak. University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson described the decline in the United States’ natural population increase as “stunning,” saying it was the smallest spread of births over deaths in more than 80 years.