The coronavirus pandemic has done a doozy on the country’s demographics, with fertility rates plummeting and death rates higher than expected for years to come, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
Analysts are now figuring an additional 140,000 deaths per year, or about 4.5% extra, for the rest of this decade.
The fertility rate, meanwhile, has dropped to 1.6 births per woman. Even when it begins to rise again, it will plateau at 1.75 births — well below the 1.9 births CBO figured on before the pandemic, and far less than the 2.1-birth “replacement rate” needed to maintain the population.