Congressional Budget Office Projects Lower Than Expected US Population Growth
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Jan. 7 that the U.S. population will likely grow by only 15 million people in the next 30 years, a decline from its last estimate.
The office projects 364 million people living in the United States in 2056, up from the current population of around 349 million.
The population growth will be 0.3 percent on average in the next 10 years, but will go down to an average rate of just 0.1 percent between 2037 and 2056, CBO projects.
The population projection is down 2.1 percent from the 372 million CBO estimated in a January 2025 report, and the 383 million it projected in a 2024 estimate.
The drop stems from declining fertility rates and lower numbers of immigrants coming to the country, according to the budget office.
For a generation to replace itself in the absence of immigration, the fertility rate needs to be 2.1 births per woman.
The fertility rate in the United States peaked in 2007 at 2.12 births per woman. It dropped to 1.6 births per woman in 2024, the most recent year for which data on fertility were available when the CBO compiled the new projections.
CBO projects the rate will decrease to 1.58 births per woman in 2026 and to 1.53 births per woman in 2036, and that the rate will not drop further in the following 20 years.
Women born in other countries are more likely to have more children. CBO projects the fertility rate for those women to fall from 1.79 births per woman in 2026 before flattening at 1.66 births per woman in 2036. Native-born women will have 1.5 births per woman in 2032, down from 1.53 births per woman currently, and stay around that rate through 2056, according to the office.
The office acknowledged its projections are “subject to considerable uncertainty” and that changes from the projections would impact the actual population.
President Donald Trump has attempted to increase the birth rate through various actions, including introducing taxpayer-funded savings accounts for newborns and making a deal to lower the cost of fertility drugs.
Immigration
CBO said that without net immigration, or more immigrants coming to the country than those leaving, the population would start shrinking in 2030.
The immigration projections are down from 2025, when CBO estimated net immigration would be 2 million in 2025, 1.5 million in 2026, and an average of 1.1 million per year from 2027 to 2055.
CBO said in 2025, just 410,000 immigrants were added. It also now projects an average of just 330,000 more immigrants entering the United States than leaving each year from 2026 to 2036, although it does forecast an increase to 1.2 million a year in the following two decades.
The reduction is partly because of a drop in illegal immigration under President Donald Trump, demographers said. CBO said the combined net immigration of three types of immigrants—people who illegally entered the country, people who illegally stayed after their legal status expired, and people who were paroled during the Biden administration—plummeted from 2.4 million in 2023 to 1.3 million in 2024 and negative 360,000 in 2025.
CBO said its immigration projections were uncertain, in part because future actions from Congress or a president could impact immigration.
Trump and administration officials have used a variety of methods to stem illegal immigration and strengthen vetting procedures, including a visa ban on applications for immigrants from some countries and deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in U.S. cities to track down immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Trump’s tax and spending legislative package, passed by Congress and signed in July, included roughly $150 billion to ramp up immigration enforcement and deportation agenda over the next four years.
Even if the limits on immigration and increased deportations end with the Trump administration in three years, “it’s still a demographic shock,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, of the new forecast.