America's Teenage Population is Shrinking

America's teenage population is expected to shrink in the coming decade, whilst the number of people aged 70 or over expands by 14.5 million, research suggests.

According to figures published on Tuesday by John Burns, a U.S. housing industry research outfit, the number of 15 to 19-year-olds will decrease by 700,000 between 2023 and 2033, as will the number of 10 to 14-year-olds.

Chris Porter, chief demographer at John Burns, told Newsweek that it had derived the smaller proportion of teenagers at the end of that timescale from a general decline in U.S. births from 2007 through to today.

"Teenagers in 2033 would have been born between 2014 and 2020, and we saw births during that period of time declining from nearly 4 million in 2014 to 3.6 million in 2020," he said. "As for the older population, we saw the large[st] rise in the population 60 years and older over this last decade.

"As those people age into their 70s over the next decade, we'll see sizeable growth in the older population. Longer life expectancies compared to prior generations also is a factor in this outsized growth."

The United States' fertility rate has fallen by 26 percent between 1971 and 2021, from a woman having on average 2.26 children 50 years ago to 1.66 children now.

Experts say a variety of factors can contribute to decreasing fertility rates, from enhanced access to contraception to improved economic prosperity, as well as lower child mortality that makes mothers less likely to have more children.

Meanwhile, John Burns expects the number of people aged 70 or over to boom from 40.8 million to 55.3 million by 2033.

This could pose a growing economic problem for the U.S., as an aging population would lead to fewer people entering the workforce while a greater proportion retire at the same time. This, in turn, means there would be fewer taxpayers to finance a greater number of pensions.

Porter said the "biggest wildcard" in the population projections was immigration, which had risen significantly in recent years and primarily consisted of working-age people.

Over a million people became legal permanent residents in 2021, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics suggest there were nearly two million encounters with undocumented migrants the same year. There were a further 2.8 million encounters in 2022 and 3.2 million in 2023, a majority of whom were single adults.

Porter said these levels of migration will have a "noticeable impact" in the near term before likely normalizing, providing a boost to the proportion of people aged 25-54 "which had barely been growing at all in recent years."

This "provides some relief to a tight labor market," he said, but "also means stronger housing demand. We'll need housing for both renters and owners. This also likely means more-than-usual remodeling activity as the growing population 70 years and older ages in place and spends their retirement savings."

But questions remain as to what impact fewer teenagers will have on American culture.

Since the baby boomer generation, teenagers have had a major influence on what is at the forefront of the zeitgeist, from the pop wave of the 1960s to TikTok influencers now. With the age group set to shrink, their dominant influence on cultural trends might wane with it.