Dying US Counties: A "Baby-Bust" Phenomenon

Across the developed world, the "baby bust" is leaving its mark in ghost towns, ghost counties, de-populating cities and states, and an emerging displacement of older populations by newer populations of outside origin.

Dying counties in the U.S. were rare until the 1960s, when the baby boom ended. By 1973, as farming communities declined, roughly 515 counties — mostly in the Great Plains — reported natural decrease. The phenomenon then began to show up in industrial regions, such as upstate New York and California. Natural decrease peaked in 2002 at a record 985, or 1 in 3 counties, before increasing births and an influx of Hispanic immigration helped add to county populations during the housing boom.

Following the recent recession, birth rates have dropped to the lowest in a century. Preliminary census numbers for 2007-09 now show that the number of dying counties is back on the upswing. Recent additions include Pittsburgh and its surrounding counties.

James Follain, senior fellow and economist at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the University of Albany, said a new kind of declining city may be emerging in the wake of the housing bust — metropolitan areas that rapidly overbuilt earlier in the decade and then suffered massive foreclosures.

He cited as examples Las Vegas, Miami, parts of Arizona, and Stockton, Modesto, Fresno and Riverside in California. Like traditional ghost towns, Follain says, portions of these areas could spiral down from persistent loss of jobs and population and lose their reason for being.

Follain also pointed to a tighter fiscal environment in Washington that will limit help to troubled areas. The Obama administration announced this month it would shrink the government's role in the mortgage system to reduce taxpayer exposure to risk. House Republicans also are pushing federal spending cuts of more than $61 billion, even if it means reducing jobs.

"It's going to be a very slow recovery," Follain said. _AP-Yahoo

You may think that the population bust is mainly affecting Japan and Russia, but this deflationary trend affects virtually all European and Northeast Asian populations. While third world populations continue to expand, more developed nations -- with populations possessing higher average IQs -- are shrinking. The end result of these differential birthrates is a steady decline in the average global population IQ -- despite the so-called "Flynn effect."

It is clear that the higher-IQ populations of the world -- the people who drove the technological revolutions in medicine, agriculture, science, technology etc -- are fading, while the lower-IQ populations are on the ascendancy, numbers-wise. This is an ominous trend for the planet overall, since poverty, corruption, and eco-devastation are greater overall in low-IQ, third world regions.

It is time to face the facts about global population trends and what they mean for the intermediate term of the human world. The coming reality -- or should I say the "coming anarchy" -- will not be pretty. Those who are prepared will be better suited to reach the other side.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.