Our Changing Demography

That the population growth rate is now slightly below replacement in the US is also evident in the population pyramids for the United States, published by the US Census Bureau International Programs Database.  Rather than a "pyramid" shape that is more typical of a growing population, the shape of the population distribution in the US is a bit more like a barrel.  A comparison with the US population pyramid from thirty years ago, reveals how our population has been aging: the US population in 1986 was proportionally much younger than it is today.  According to the World Bank Development Indicators, the dependency ratio is the US was 50% in 2014 (calculated as the population under 15 and over 64 divided by the working population, between 15-64), whereas the number in 1984 was 51 percent.  So, though the number of dependents has not been changing, the age composition of the dependents has.