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US must 'encourage people to have more children' in order to keep up with China: author

With U.S.-China tensions mounting, Vox Co-Founder Matthew Yglesias believes he’s found a way for America to maintain its position as the world’s leading superpower. His proposal? Tripling America’s population, bringing it to roughly 1 billion citizens by the year 2100. The U.S. currently has about 331.4 million Americans, miles short of China’s population of 1.4 billion.

According to surveys Yglesias referenced, the ideal nuclear family has shrunk in the U.S. over the last few decades. “We need to address that. That means paid parental leave, it means investments in daycare, it means thinking about what [less affluent families] do during the summertime,” Yglesias said.

One of the biggest strains on the nation’s healthcare system, he adds, is “the aging of the population. It's not the number of people, but it's our demographic shape.” He believes that in order to grow the population, America needs to “encourage people to have more children, do more on the childcare front, do more in terms of child allowance, [and] bring more immigrants,” Yglesias told Yahoo Finance, in an interview to discuss the publication of his new book, “1 Billion Americans.” “We should be creating a more sustainable sort of population pyramid where these things can work,” he said.

With the relaxing of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, visitors crowd the boardwalk on Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City, Maryland, U.S., May 23, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque     TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
With the relaxing of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, visitors crowd the boardwalk on Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City, Maryland, U.S., May 23, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Yglesias went on to argue that investing in children is crucial to growing the U.S. economy. “If America can recapture its leadership position, we can have an economy that’s thriving, and also live [up to] our values,” he said.

Jennifer Shanker is a producer for Yahoo Finance.

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