Congress and the year 2000: peering into the demographic future

Business Horizons, Nov-Dec, 1993 by Peter A. Morrison

Like the flow of deep ocean currents, demographic shifts generate motion that, though gradual, is steady in direction and enduring in effect. They may subtly shape policy issues and occasionally lend urgency to them. The effects of such shifts endure in the redistribution of wealth and income across generations and regions of the country, the characteristics of the poor, and the changing relationships within families and between family members and the workplace. Demographic shifts can also widen or narrow margins for policy action.

In this article, I identify the probable directions of change that will flow from population shifts over the next several decades and explore the potential effects on several areas of future congressional concern. Those changes are advancing on five fronts:

* the circumstances of children's families;

* the characteristics of the work force;

* the racial and ethnic makeup of local electorates;

* the aging of the population; and

* the population's geographic distribution.

WHAT LIES AHEAD

Peering into the future, demographers project certain changes with confidence but regard other changes as foreseeable only in direction, not magnitude. Even uncertain projections, however, help form images of the future, whose realization can be facilitated, hampered, or even prevented by public policy.

Underlying demographic pressures will promote interest groups around particular issues and also generate common national concerns. One such interest group--working parents with young children--has materialized because of the steady influx of young women into the work force and because of changing economic conditions in which two incomes have become a necessity of middleclass life. Another group--working adults with frail elderly parents--is emerging as the changing structure of families affects their capacity to provide long-term care.

Although the intensity and timing of these developments can vary across the nation, demographic shifts exert gradual but cumulative force on national social legislation and budgets. Eventually they reshape the nation's political agenda.

Reconfiguration of Children's Families

One area of demographic change is the altered family circumstances of children. Families today are profoundly different from those of several decades ago. Barring a reversal of current trends, the year 2000 will be a time when

* more than one out of every four children is born to an unmarried woman;

* more than two of every three children under age six has a mother who is employed outside the home;

* fewer than three of every ten adolescents will have lived in a continuously intact family through all 18 years of their youth.

* As of 1992, these trends had advanced further within the black than within the white community, but they are now increasing among whites as well (see Figure 1). The majority of black children already live in single-parent families. The corresponding proportions for white children more than doubled between 1970 and 1992 to 21 percent. Among Hispanic children, close to one in three lived with only one parent in 1992. For children who were born in 1980, demographers foresee that as many as two of every three white children and 19 of every 20 black children will live in single-parent families at some time in their youth.

One reason children's families are changing is that more of the women having children are not married. Nationally, unmarried women bear 1.7 million children, or 28 percent of all births annually--the highest proportion ever. Among black women, two-thirds of all births occur out of wedlock; among white women the number is one-fifth.

Another reason for this change is that original marriages no longer last a lifetime as they did in earlier generations. Among women in their late 20s and 30s, for example, more than half of original marriages are projected to dissolve (see Figure 2).

The paths leading children into single-parent family settings are distinctly different for blacks and whites. The majority of black children are born into them, whereas the majority of white children end up with one parent as a result of marital disruption (see Figure 3). By 1988, 54 percent of all black children living with one parent had been born to a mother who had never married, whereas 72 percent of all white children living with one parent had entered that situation because their parents separated or divorced.

These demographic changes have wide-ranging importance for children today. Surely the most telling material indicator of that change is the rise in child poverty since the early 1970s. In recent years, the United States has managed to reduce poverty-but only among elderly people. Among this age group, the results have been impressive, with the percentage of elderly people living in poverty falling from close to a third in 1968 to about 12 percent by 1991. Poverty among children, however, has worsened (see Figure 4).

Another significant indicator is the increase in what has been labeled the "new morbidity of childhood": developmental delays, learning difficulties, and emotional and behavioral problems. The prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems, for example, varies from 8 percent among children in intact two-parent families to 19-24 percent among children in non-intact ones (see Figure 5).