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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

> our declining population

Our what?

The US's population is not declining. However, without immigration, our population growth would be very close to zero, and a yet lower rate of natural increase is locked in over the next couple of decades (more old people who will die than children).

And, I mean, it's obviously hard to predict beyond that, but it doesn't seem like anyone has any real clear answer to the trend of steadily decreasing TFR right now.

I suspect OP mean declining fertility rate. USA population is still increasing, but is slowing down, and will sharply drop if the fertility rate remains below replacement of ~2 children per woman.

I believe OP is referring to how immigration is the only known working solution to a decreasing population.

The US fertility rate is already 1.6 births per woman[0], and the population is only not decreasing because it still receives far more immigration than, say, Japan or South Korea.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr038.pdf

This is not specific to the US. The US is on 147th position [1], right near a lot of European countries, and I don't think there are easy way to rollback the demographic transition.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...

> is the only known working solution to a decreasing population.

Which it obviously isn't a working solution in any nature of the word. Using arbitrary countries to avoid common mousetraps.

Hypothetically all women in Estonia suddenly opt out of having children for a variety of reasons. They had previously had no problems like this and enjoyed a high fertility rate up until now. The government of Estonia sees this and starts mass immigrating Japanese men and women and are able to stabilize their population. Though, the Japanese women also normalize to the same state of opting out after just one generation.

The government claims that this too is an emergency and seeks another seemingly arbitrary population of humans to import.

The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960624 - February 2026 (1008 comments)

The nuance is ~71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size. US working age population cohort has likely peaked. The future of the developed world is fighting over global skilled workers and young potential immigrants who would settle and start families in your jurisdiction.

Is the U.S. Labor Force Nearing Its Peak? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726615 - June 2026

The Fertility Rate of Every Country in the World - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-world-pop... - May 17th, 2026

U.S. Total Fertility Rate by State 2007 vs 2025 - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qt22ka/oc... - February 2026

The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)

Our World In Data: Population tool: How will populations across the world change in the 21st century? - https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool

("demography is destiny")

Additional citation:

The Demographic Dead End: 2026 State of Fertility Report - https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-demographic-dead-end-... - July 2026

Report: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/reports/ifs-stateo... [pdf]

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