George Loch

Management

3 Big Ways that the U.S. Will Change Over the Next Decade

The number of old people will increase, while the proportion of white Americans will continue to fall.

Dudley L. Poston, Jr.,
The Conversation

January 2, 2020

By Dudley L. Poston, Jr.

The Conversation

The U.S. has just entered the new decade of the 2020s.

What does our country look like today, and what will it look like 10 years from now, on Jan. 1, 2030? Which demographic groups in the U.S. will grow the most, and which groups will not grow as much, or maybe even decline in the next 10 years?

I am a demographer and I have examined population data from the U.S. Census Bureau and from the Population Division of the United Nations.

Projections show that whites will decline; the number of old people will increase; and racial minorities, mainly Hispanics, will grow the most, making them the main engine of demographic change in the U.S. for the next 10 years and beyond.

1. There will be more of us.

The U.S. population today, at the start of 2020, numbers just over 331 million people.

The U.S. is the third largest country in the world, outnumbered only by the two demographic billionaires, China and India, at just over 1.4 billion and just under 1.4 billion, respectively.

Ten years from now, the U.S. population will have almost 350 million people. China and India will still be bigger, but India with 1.5 billion people will now be larger than China, with 1.46 billion.

2. The population will get older.

The U.S. is getting older and it’s going to keep getting older.

Today, there are over 74.1 million people under age 18 in the U.S. country. There are 56.4 million people age 65 and older.

Ten years from now, there will almost be as many old folks as there are young ones. The numbers of young people will have grown just a little to 76.3 million, but the numbers of old people will have increased a lot – to 74.1 million. A lot of these new elderly will be baby boomers.

For example, take the really old folks – people over the age of 100. How many centenarians are in the U.S. population today and how many are there likely to be 10 years from now?

According to demographers at the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of centenarians in the U.S. grew from over 53,000 in 2010 to over 90,000 in 2020. By 2030, there will most likely be over 130,000 centenarians in the U.S.

But this increase of centenarians by 2030 is only a small indication of their growth in later decades. In the year of 2046, the first group of surviving baby boomers will reach 100 years, and that’s when U.S. centenarians will really start to grow. By 2060 there will be over 603,000. That’s a lot of really old people.

I sometimes ask my undergraduate students how many of them have ever actually seen a person 100 years old or older. In my classes of 140 or more students, no more than maybe six raise their hands. Lots more college students will be raising their hands when they are asked that question in 2060.

3. Racial proportions will shift.

In 2020, non-Hispanic white people, hereafter called whites, are still the majority race in the U.S., representing 59.7% of the U.S. population.

In my research with the demographer Rogelio Saenz, we have shown that the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping since 1950 and it will continue to go down.

Today, after whites, the Hispanic population is the next biggest group at 18.7% of the U.S., followed by blacks and Asians.

What will the country look like racially in 2030? Whites will have dropped to 55.8% of the population, and Hispanics will have grown to 21.1%. The percentage of black and Asian Americans will also grow significantly.

So between now and 2030, whites as a proportion of the population will get smaller, and the minority race groups will all keep getting bigger.

Eventually, whites will become a minority, dropping below 50% of the U.S. population in around the year of 2045.

However, on the first day of 2020, whites under age 18 were already in the minority. Among all the young people now in the U.S., there are more minority young people than there are white young people.

Among old people age 65 and over, whites are still in the majority. Indeed white old people, compared to minority old people, will continue to be in the majority until some years after 2060.

Hispanics and the other racial minorities will be the country’s main demographic engine of population change in future years; this is the most significant demographic change Americans will see.

I’ve shown above how much older the U.S. population has become and will become in the years ahead. Were it not for the racial minorities countering this aging of the U.S. population, the U.S. by 2030 and later would have become even older than it is today and will be in 2030.

This post originally appeared at The Conversation. Follow @ConversationUS on Twitter.

NEXT STORY: Confucius Has a Message for Leaders Who Want to Succeed: Reflect

Confucius sculptures are seen at a shrine in Japan in 2012. Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com

Management

Confucius Has a Message for Leaders Who Want to Succeed: Reflect

The ancient Chinese teacher called reflection the best way to become wise, yet we rarely consider it a core trait of a great leader. It's time for that to change.

Khatera Sahibzada,
The Conversation

January 1, 2020

By Khatera Sahibzada

Adjunct Lecturer in Applied Psychology, University of Southern California

The Conversation

One of the most admirable and arguably underrated qualities of leadership is the capacity for reflection. Confucius called it the most noble way to learn wisdom.

But when we talk about what makes someone a successful leader, we typically describe attributes like the ability to innovate, make strategic decisions or manage uncertainty. We rarely mention reflection among the core traits of a great leader.

Yet their capacity to reflect on decisions, behaviors and learning certainly helped guide them toward success. Media mogul Arianna Huffington, for example, recommends reflection as a way to connect with one’s own wisdom and creativity. Billionaire investor Ray Dalio credits reflecting on painful experiences with helping him build Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.

Reflection is different than critical thinking, which is more focused on problem solving and an end goal. Reflective thinking helps us understand our underlying beliefs and assumptions and how they influence our decisions, guide us in problem-solving and drive behavior.

In my consulting work, I help organizations select top talent and rising stars who can achieve superior levels of performance. Companies tell me they want leaders who can make the “right” decisions quickly and decisively, often while balancing competing interests.

Given the fast-paced nature of the world we inhabit, it may seem counterintuitive for them and others to include the ability to reflect as among the most important traits that will determine a leader’s success. Yet there is growing evidence showing precisely that.

Power of reflection

Physicians understand this intuitively because they must make lightning-quick life and death decisions, requiring ways to help them navigate uncertain situations.

A 2015 paper on the role of reflection in bioethics education describes the ability to reflect as “crucial” to future physicians and helps them develop their “ethical and professional acumen and sensitivity,” according to researchers at Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, which integrates the topic into its formal curriculum.

As such, the school’s medical students participate in small group sessions and reflection-themed assignments that require them to examine their experiences in classes with questions like “What inspired you?” and “Do you feel you are becoming the physician you want to be?”

The majority of students who have participated in these programs said they found it helpful for their personal and professional growth.

Similarly, a year-long study by researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine and Boston College examined the role of reflection on physician-patient interactions. They found that physicians who reflected on the tone they used with patients – and how it affected the latter’s willingness to disclose information – led to improved communication and a greater emphasis on the patient’s actual experiences rather than their own perceptions.

Besides the potential for sharpened awareness and attentiveness in communication, reflection also boosts confidence in one’s ability to complete a task and also improves the understanding of the task, according to researchers at Harvard Business School. Perhaps surprisingly, they found that taking the time to reflect after finishing a job enhances performance more than additional experience doing it.

15 minutes a day

Although there is emerging evidence showing the benefits of reflection, why aren’t more leaders engaging in this activity?

There may be a host of reasons, the obvious answers being a lack of desire and time. According to behavioral scientists, most people prefer to engage in external activities rather than be alone with their thoughts.

A study of 1,114 chief executive officers in Brazil, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States examined how they spend their workday. They found that on average CEOs spend about 70 percent of their time interacting with others either in-person or virtually. The rest is primarily spent on activities supporting these interactions such as travel and preparing for meetings.

This doesn’t leave a lot of time for focused reflection. Still, some leaders recognize the benefit of setting aside time to do just that.

For example, Harry Kraemer, the former CEO of Baxter International, schedules a nightly ritual of reflection during which he asks self-examining questions such as, “If I lived today over again, what would have I done differently?”

Kraemer doesn’t advocate a specific approach to self-reflection since he believes it to be a personal matter. But he strongly recommends that leaders make the time for it, even as little as 15 minutes a day. Interestingly, researchers have found that 15 minutes of self-reflection at the end of the day can in fact boost performance.

Spanx founder and billionaire Sara Blakely uses journaling as a means of reflection. In an interview, Blakely said she has filled about 20 notebooks with all the “terrible things” that have happened to her.

“Every terrible thing that happens to you always has a hidden gift and is leading you to something greater,” she said.

The idea that the best learning happens in moments of quiet reflection is a sentiment backed by research from the University of Texas at Austin. Researchers examined whether reflection enhances future learning. Participants were assigned memorization tasks and given time between them to think about anything. Participants, who used that in-between time to reflect on what they learned, became better able to connect new information to related ideas they already knew.

He may be ‘The Thinker,’ but he’s probably reflecting. tkachuk/Shutterstock.com

How to make it your own

So how can we all take advantage of the power of reflection?

The key, according to organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, is to ask “what” rather than “why.” For example, instead of asking, “Why did this happen?” ask, “What could I have done differently to stop it from happening again?”

Asking “what” questions help us to escape the loop of rumination, maintain objectivity and stay focused on the future. When individuals take a “distanced perspective,” seeing things as an observer, they report higher levels of confidence and are able to better respond to sources of stress.

There is no unique universal approach to reflective inquiry. Investigate a practice that resonates most with you and apply it daily, beginning with minor challenges or even relatively benign situations.

There is no need to expect to get it “right and now.” The ultimate aim is to place yourself simultaneously as an active participant and observer of your life and experiences.

This post originally appeared at The Conversation. Follow @ConversationUS on Twitter.

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