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300 million ... and counting
If you're like many people, that's a hard number to comprehend, but you might want to get used to that figure. Later that year, the U.S. population will reach that mark.
By Gina Kim -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, January 29, 2006
Get to know this number: 300 million.
The U.S. Census Bureau expects the country's population to hit the 300-million mark sometime in October, says Katrina Wengert, a demographer in the bureau's population division.

The main cause: births outnumbering deaths. In the last five years, about 58 percent of growth has come from such natural increase while 42 percent is because of immigration, according to the Census Bureau.

California, the most populous state in the country with 36.1 million people, is growing at a slightly faster rate than the nation, says Mary Heim, chief of the demographic research unit in the state's Department of Finance.

"California continues to be an attractive place for people to live," she says.

The natural increase in California last year also outpaced immigration, with 64 percent of growth because of births outweighing deaths and 36 percent because of immigration, she says.

What does all this mean? Not a lot to most people, it seems. While some lament the strain on natural resources and the toll the growing population exacts on the environment, many Americans can't make an accurate guess when asked how many people live in the United States.

"It's kind of like understanding your credit card debt - you can't believe it's that huge," says Christine Craft, Sacramento Talk City radio talk show host, which is broadcast on 1240 AM (KSAC). "The number becomes sort of inconceivable when it gets out of your realm of understanding."

John Allen Paulos, a math professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, says people have a hard time relating to numbers because they erroneously think it doesn't affect their lives.

"It is sort of a scandal that people don't know roughly how many Americans there are because if you don't know that, you can't evaluate all kinds of other statistics or facts such as the number of kidnapped children or the number of those killed from this or that disease," he says.

If anything, reaching the 300 million people benchmark is a time to look at the idea of overpopulation and how it may affect the quality of our lives, says Brian Dixon, director of government relations for Population Connection, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group formerly known as Zero Population Growth.

"It's really about what is America going to look like - are we going to have enough schools, are classes going to be too crowded," he says. "What services are going to be available for people? Are our communities going to be safe and healthy? Will there be enough parks and open space?"

Dixon cites evidence pointing to increased cases of childhood asthma as an urgent issue as well as the United States holding the title of having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy of any industrialized country.

"The problems aren't going to start when the population hits 300 million, the problems are already there," he says. "They're just going to get worse the longer we wait to begin addressing the problems we're facing."

There's no question the population is growing fast. In 1790, the first U.S. census counted 3.9 million people. The number hit 10 million in 1822, then 100 million in 1917, according to Monty Wood of the U.S. Census Bureau. Fifty years later, that number doubled to 200 million and now, 39 years later, it will hit 300 million.

But a growing population isn't all doom and gloom, says Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California.

"Were it not for a growing population of young workers, we would face an even greater burden trying to pay for Social Security and Medicare than we already do," he says.

Countries with little growth or even population declines such as Japan and in Europe are at the opposite end of the spectrum, he says, adding, "They're asking, 'What are we going to do with a declining working age population and growing aging population?'"

Athough U.S. population growth is directly caused by natural increase - basically more births than deaths, that doesn't take into account the indirect result of immigration, Johnson says.

In 2003, 24 percent of U.S. women who gave birth that year were foreign-born and 46 percent of California women who gave birth that year were foreign-born, according to National Vital Statistics Reports and the California Department of Health Services.

But think beyond the raw numbers, Johnson says. "You always have to think of the counterfactual. If not for immigration, the U.S. population would not be growing very fast, but we also would be a lot older," he says. "We're younger because immigrants are young, working-age adults for the most part and also because they are in their prime child-bearing years."

The Sierra Club takes a ground-up approach to the increasing population. While the organization laments the stress population growth places on the environment, it believes the focus should be on human rights, says Annette Souder, the San Francisco-based organization's senior Washington representative.

Ensuring people have access to reproductive health care, education and equal economic opportunities is directly linked to the planet's health, Souder contends.

"When every individual has access to basic human rights, they choose to have smaller and healthier families which, in turn, helps to slow or decrease the pressures from population growth," she says.

Still, the average person doesn't really care about the specific number of people living in the United States, says Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University.

They'll probably pause at the gee-whiz number and then continue with their lives, albeit with the new knowledge that there are 300 million people in the United States, he says.

Thompson asked 10 people on his campus about the U.S. population and got numbers ranging from 5 million to 25 billion.

"That's a pretty big range and it shows how little sense we have about numbers in that range," he says. "When it happens, it's going to be talked about and remarked about and from that day forward, people are going to know there are about 300 million people who live in the United States."

Locally, people don't seem to be much more knowledgeable. Nobody came close in an informal poll of five people at Granite Regional Park's off-leash dog park.

Bill Epsen, 43, a Sacramento plumber, guessed 50 million but then changed his mind.

"I'm going to go with 150 million," he said.

Kellen Stevenson, 13, a seventh- grader at Mills Middle School in Rancho Cordova, speculated 1.3 billion but decided on 40 million.

"I know it's not as much as China," he said, adding that China probably has 3 billion people. (It's actually 1.3 billion). Jeff Williams, 41, a Sacramento arborist, went with 100 million.

"I was thinking there were maybe 2 million per state," he reasoned.

When pressed for an answer, Kim Bowen, 26, a behavior specialist for the North Sacramento School District, surmised 100 million as well.

"I have absolutely no idea," she conceded.

Jennifer McMahon, 33, an east Sacramento homemaker, went lower.

"Off the top of my head, 10 million," she said.

When told that it's more like 30 times that, McMahon was astounded.

"That's scary," she said. "That's just a lot of people."



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CALIFORNIA AND LOCAL POPULATION BY THE NUMBERS
2015
The year California's population will top 40 million.

1.4 million
Number of residents in Sacramento County in 2004.

454,300
Number of residents in the city of Sacramento in 2004.

64
Percentage of California's population growth in 2005 because of natural increase. The remainder, 36 percent, is because of immigration.

61
Number of births in California each hour.

27
Number of deaths in California each hour.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, California Department of Finance demographic research unit and the California Department of Health Records


U.S. POPULATION THROUGH THE YEARS
1790
The first census recorded 3.9 million.

1822
Population hit 10 million.

1917
Population hit 100 million.

1967
Population hit 200 million.

2006
Population will hit 300 million.

POPULATION BY THE NUMBERS
6.5 billion
Current world population

1.3 billion
Population of China, the world's most populous country. China is followed by India, which is home to 1.1 billion people, and then the United States.

297.8 million
U.S. population at the end of 2005.

2.7 million
Increase in U.S. population from 2004.

84
Number of people per square mile in the United States.

42
Percentage increase in U.S. population from 2000 to 2005 because of immigration. The majority, 57.7 percent, is from births.

24
Percentage of U.S. women who gave birth in 2003 and were foreign-born.

4.5 pounds
Amount of garbage produced per person each day in the United States in 2003. About 30 percent is recycled, 14 percent burned and the remaining 56 percent sent to landfills.

14 seconds
Time it takes for the U.S. population to gain a person after factoring in a birth every eight seconds, a death every 12 seconds and an international migrant every 31 seconds. Those estimates are for January, generally a slower time for births and immigration, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

50
Percentage of the world's international migrants that end up in the United States.

5
Percentage of the world's population the United States accounts for.

12
Percentage of Americans in 2004 who were foreign-born. That's up from 5 percent in 1970.

2
Average number of children American women will have during their child-bearing years. That compares to 1.5 in Canada, 1.4 in Europe, and 1.3 in Japan.

23
Percentage of American children under the age of 15 who are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

36.1 million
Population of California, the most populous state in the country. Texas ranks second with 22.9 million people and New York is third with 19.3 million.

509,000
Population of Wyoming, as of 2005, the least populous state in the country. Vermont is the second populous with 623,000 people.

404,000
Population increase 2004 to 2005 in Florida, which witnessed the numerical increase.

3.5
Percentage increase population from 2004 2005 in Nevada, which considered the fastest-growing state.

54
Percentage of people live in the United States' most populous states.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, California Department of Finance demographic research unit, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention national vital statistics reports, California Department of Health Records, the Environmental Protection Agency, Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook and the Population Reference Bureau.


About the writer:
The Bee's Gina Kim can be reached at (916)321-1228 or gkim@sacbee.com.

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