Population Trends Quotes

Demography is destiny.

The population forecast for the United States in 1970 is 170 million. The population forecast for Russia alone in 1970 is 251 million. The implications are clear.

One of the things that got me on this topic for this book was that when I was researching the column I wrote in 2009 saying that I was stepping down from my column at "Newsweek" because I wanted to make room for newer, fresh voices out there, I discovered that in the year I was born, 1952, the average life expectancy of an American was 68. I was shocked by that figure and every time I mention it I hear a gasp from somebody in the crowd. Now, of course, we're more or less at 80, so that means that we've gotten 12 additional years.

Reaching out to Hispanics is critical to our future. The fastest-growing, and most conservative, segment of the population are natural Republicans.

By 2030, just a small percentage of the global population will live in poverty.

I'm a big fan of huge populations of people, so you'd think with 300 million people in the country, you don't even have to please 1% to be phenomenally successful.

Our population is headed for a stable plateau, which means an aging population.

Demography drives the economy.

...there is simply nothing so important to a people and its government as how many of them there are, whether their number is growing or declining, how they are distributed as between different ages, sexes, and different social classes and racial and ethnic groups, and again, which way these numbers are moving.

When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.

Deaths, births, and marriages, considering how much they are separately dependent on the freedom of the human will, should seem to be subject to no law according to which any calculation could be made beforehand of their amount; and yet the yearly registers of these events in great countries prove that they go on with as much conformity to the laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather.

We're up at almost seven billion people on the planet and most of that growth has been in the developing world.

Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!

You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.

I am one of the unpraised, unrewarded millions without whom Statistics would be a bankrupt science. It is we who are born, who marry, who die, in constant ratios.

The majority of Latinos in this country are 28 years old or younger. All of those people out there attacking the Latino community, when you see a Latino going down the street with a baby carriage and a couple of children walking beside them, they should say 'Hey, there goes my social security and my Medicare.' Those are the people that are going to contribute to keep our social security system funded and our medical system funded.

The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, the average was down to 3.5.

In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent.

The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.