According to data published Tuesday, the United States’ population growth dropped to the lowest as the country’s birth over the first year of the disease outbreak. The coronavirus slowed immigration, postponed pregnancies, and killed hundreds of Americans.

The United States has grown only by 0.1 percent, with an additional 392,665 people have added to the country’s population between July 2020 and July 2021, bringing the number to 331.8 million.

The United States has experienced a slow population increase for years, but the pandemic has aggravated that pattern. This year was the first since 1937 that the country’s population increased by less than one million people.

“I was going to expect slower growth, but nothing this reduced,” stated “William Frey, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution’s Brookings Metro metropolitan policy program. “It tells us that this disease outbreak has had a big effect on us in all sorts of ways, and now demographic trends.”

Once the epidemic is under control, the United States may see a reduction in deaths, but population increase is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels due to fewer births.

According to Frey, this will boost the need for immigration by younger employees whose taxes can provide assistance programs such as Social Security.

“We have an aging population, which means there are fewer women of child-bearing age,” Frey explained. “We see younger people postponing having kids, and they will have fewer kids.”

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Young families’ judgment not to have kids may be pushed by money considerations as much as, if not more than, health issues, according to Linda Kahn, a professor at The University and lead scientist in a study that found that nearly half of New York City moms who had been trying to get pregnant before the disease outbreak started in the U.S.

“COVID was a test run for our entire system and how it disproves women and families,” Kahn explained. “Women were hit harder by the disease outbreak.

They were laid off at a higher rate and often home-schooled their children. The stresses on women were immense, and there is no welfare state in the United States.”

The population forecasts are deducted from births, deaths, and migrations. Natural rises from births outnumbered deaths due to international population movement for the first time.

International migration resulted in a net rise of almost 245,000 citizens, but new births exceeded the number of deaths by only approximately 148,000.

During the first year of the epidemic, the U.S. population boost fell to its lowest rate as its founding.

Because of COVID-19 constraints, such as border closures for non-essential transportation and the closing of several consulates internationally where visas are issued, emigration fell by roughly half from the prior year.

As recently as 2016, the United States experienced a net gain of more than one million recent immigrants.

Deaths outmatched births in more than a couple dozen, including Florida. In Florida, deaths outnumbered births by more than 45,000 people, but the state’s redeeming feature was a migration benefit of more than 259,000 people, the highest in the country.

Kenneth Johnson, a research fellow at the University of New Hampshire, called the decrease in the United States’ natural growing population “breathtaking,” noting that it was the smallest stretching of births over deaths in even more than 80 years.

“Of course, the majority of this is COVID, but not all of it,” Johnson explained. “The steady growth in the United States seems to be at a low ebb before COVID, with the fertility rate setting new lows every year deaths increasing steadily due to population aging.”

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In 2020 and 2021, 33 states encountered population growth, mainly due to domestic population movement, while 17 states and the District of Columbia felt population decrease.

The Mountain West states experienced the highest year-over-year levels of growth, with Idaho increasing by nearly 3% and Utah and Montana increasing by 1.7 percent each.

The District of Columbia decreased 2.9 percent of the residents, while New York and Illinois did lose 1.6 and 0.9 percent, respectively.

In terms of absolute numbers, California had the highest net population decrease of any state due to people leaving: nearly 353,000.

While the global epidemic provided some people with the opportunity to work remotely, data released recently by the Census Bureau demonstrates no significant migration in the United States.

Even so, some people took the opportunity. In September, Heidi Krueger, a tech worker, relocated to a small village south of Knoxville, Tennessee, tired of the heat, hurricane dangers, and traffic in Houston. Her front veranda has a view of the Great Smoky Mountains.

“Because I was working at home during the disease outbreak, it made it possible for me to move while keeping my current job,” Krueger explained. “I still can attach to our customers as long as I have internet.”

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