 Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Glad to see you all here. Thanks for coming out in the in the rain My name is Lisa Guernsey. I'm the director of the early education initiative here at the New America Foundation And I'm I'm very excited about what may unfold in the next hour I think this is a conversation that we're not having enough and I've learned a lot just in the past couple of months About some of the demographic data and what it's gonna mean for our future and for education policy And I'm excited to learn yet more as this conversation moves forward today so I Will do a very brief introduction, but most of our Activity this afternoon will be to hear from Dow price. I'm sorry. Dow Myers Excuse me who is a demographer and professor in the sole price school of public policy at the University of Southern, California and Dr. Myers these wrecks the population dynamics research group At USC. He's also the author of the 2007 award-winning book immigrants and boomers and has also then since then done numerous studies to look at what our population dynamics mean for us as a country for everything from immigration policy issues to early childhood and Children's health issues as well. He's the author of a very recent paper that came out in January California's diminishing resource colon children and I had the pleasure of hearing dr. Myers Present on this work a couple of months ago in Sacramento where a lot of us were convened to talk about early childhood education early childhood policy and What's coming down the road for us a lot of the insights? that he presented Back in Sacramento a couple of months ago opened my eyes to some new things that we should be thinking about particularly when it comes to our family low-income families children in Poverty and children in immigrant families and how they will be moving through our education system So it was a real pleasure to hear him speak and I'm very happy to be able to bring you all the same Experience this afternoon. I'm just set up just quickly a couple of data points and then I'm gonna let dr. Myers gonna take it from there in 1970 in the state of California children made up about a third of California's population But by 2030 that figure is expected to decline to just about one-fifth or 21% this declining child population Is evident not only in California, but in a lot of the states in the northeast and in the Great Lakes And it's going to have some implications for all of us as we move forward as our baby boomers age Is society prepared to have fewer working adults serving more retirees? Is our education system built to develop the potential of children in our In low-income and immigrant families who will comprise the bulk of the workforce of the future And and are we supporting the the parents and the grandparents who are raising Our children today and our generations for tomorrow So I will leave you with those questions as I Hope you will join me in welcoming dr. Myers to the podium. Thank you dr. Myers for being here. Thank you very much Lisa Hello everybody. Thanks for coming out in the rain. It's really great for me to be here in the rain. I'm from California We never see rain It's so exciting Except when your umbrella breaks. I have a new umbrella. I never used it before and it doesn't work Um, you know, I'm a demographer So I'm supposed to tell you lots of boring details and I'm going to put on my green eye shade and give you lots of facts You'll have to memorize But in fact really demographics are the most exciting story in America today It's told in many different ways and many people fumble the ball and tell a broken demographic narrative And really it's uh, there's so many twists and turns and let me just show you with you in a brief time today What we found out in california But first you realize that demographics are very personal to people. It's all about age sex race Immigration all these, you know very volatile issues And so we had to start with what people really think about kids and then we'll look at the data So there's a lot of ambivalence basically kids are too expensive And it's really not fair That we should be burdened with other people's child costs. Is it? That's who I read in the paper and all these kids are going to overwhelm us And immigrants, what about the immigrants? And if you don't think they're not related to this read the letters to the editor a story about kids turns into a story about immigration Okay, they're not all immigrants But who invited them in the first place and we can't afford these kids and these minorities are having way too many kids The story goes All this is actually wrong, but it's in the stories And these children are supposed to be the future But are they really the future? And whose future? And that point is actually never made We just assume that kids are the future I assume it then I realize that other people didn't believe it. What do you mean you don't believe it? Okay, well, so we have to get into the details in a way that makes sense And so to do that I'm gonna look backward 20 years and then look forward 20 years And that way you can see the future better when you realize it's a total change from the last 20 years It's a total reversal of outlooks and in california There's like four big points that have shaped all the politics there One is that growth has been booming out of control and we have to chase people away We don't need all these people it's been runaway immigration total form-born takeover has been expected because of the rapid changes And high fertility way too many kids And the growth is coming from outside and these are outsiders that we can turn away That was the attitude the last 20 years Well, uh, that was true. Maybe in 1990. There was some factual support for in part for some of these ideas But by today Everything is reversed growth has slowed down dramatically It's no longer. It's a slow steady increase no longer booming Immigration has diminished. It's no longer rising in an accelerated rate the way it was Fertility has plunged and there's a shortage of children now not a surplus And growth is coming from native born californians people born in california raised in california schools their whole lives As a totally different outlook. So we're trying to get a grip on that politically in california and realize that we're responsible for our own children That's a new idea Believe it or not because california has been a temporary Society of people who move there like arizona is today Temporary people who move there and they don't really have a full view of a lifetime in the state Let me just show you briefly just the continuing Low population growth because this is actually affected other studies have been done that people are still using the old data They don't realize that those data were were wrong. Maybe when they were invented And the old data come from 2007 That's not very long ago. The census bureau has old data come from 2008 And everything's been revised now this year. And so it's a rapid change So here we have this graph here shows you the growth each decade In california and one thing that's interesting for you guys to know about is that right here This is because of washington dc did this In the 1980s, we had more growth in california Six million people were added in one decade that has ever occurred anywhere in the united states ever And that's because of decisions in washington to build up defense spending Ronald Reagan's presidency a lot a lot of that defense spending went into southern california And so meanwhile, texas was having an oil bust. I was living there then the midwest was in the rest belt crisis New york was going bankrupt and all the growth rolled to the west coast and went to california Unfortunately, I mean people think that boom right there was like a permanent condition That's like a gold standard is a very much an aberration and you see the next two decades have come in much lower Um, but the project the forecasters didn't quite realize that and so they were still thinking in 2007 There will be this much growth each decade because these were aberrations they thought and we would get back up to normal more Well with the census data results who realized that normal is not like that Normal looks like this and all the forecasters are coming in much lower now And lower growth in part is lower children lower migration It's lower everything So it's been a change in the booming growth It's a big change in california how big We thought we were going to hit 50 million people We were expecting to get it by the year 2032 And now the new projections from the same agency Say we're not going to get it till 2049. It's a 17 year slowdown That's a pretty big correction in your growth expectations 17 years Now the more dramatic stuff is immigration and here i'm going to compare the us Along with california These are it's a method i've developed for estimating immigration in prior decades And i want to look at the the flow of annual arrivals and show how it's accelerated So here it is for the us Compared to 1970 whatever the flow is pretty pretty small in 1970 and since then it accelerated To a point that 250 more people coming each year That to the us then we're coming in 1970 And then after 2000 this flow turned downward This is 2006 before the recession here is 2010 So it's it's sort of down there and maybe now we're waiting to see what happens next In the in the us in california it peaked much earlier because of that big boom in the aerospace spending and then dropped off In an la county where i live It's dropped off even more dramatically I think the basic point here is that Immigration tends to boom in different places at different times And then it doesn't maintain that that same rate it kind of Then subsides again and the boom moves to some other state So california has already peaked and other states will peak and other states are this rising now they It's being spread more broadly across the nation, which is a good thing And in the total foreign born takeover that was supposed to be happening well in california It had been rising dramatically and they were expecting it would go like that And in fact it's since 2000 it's really just that's la here's california It's really flat the u.s. Is still rising steadily But at a more gradual rate than it did in here in the 90s was this abrupt rise And in many localities it made people sort of get Worried about what was going to come next, but it's much more gradual than people fear So with fewer immigrants you also get fewer parents and that will have an impact on your child population We've had a total generation transformation Already in california people are still thinking we have to fight the old war here of too many kids And it's gone the opposite direction Here's a number of babies born each year since 1970 in california And so back here a hundred thousand that's la county 300,000 in in california 100,000 la county born in 1972 about And after that point this dramatic rise Just a huge increase Doubling the number of babies born each year And believe me there's a mini school district planners who took those trends and said well gosh, you know Well, we're going to need this many schools, you know, they kind of overshot But who would predict it would turn around and drop so abruptly In la county, it's 35 fewer kids now than back at the peak in 1990 So the absolute numbers are going to recover. This is from the state forecast They're going to recover, but they're not going to get back to the peak that it was there before So we know there's fewer babies Now in terms of the total population you can count in different ways But the share of the state's population that are children in each of these age groups is is tapering down And whether that's a problem or not It's hard to determine because what is it what does the number mean exactly? So i'm going to try to look at it different ways Let me turn and compare some other states though. I think first We should look at not just california. Here's california california lost three and a half percent Of all of its kids under age 10 in the last decade A net decline But california as you can see is not the worst state There's other states that are much worse off The new england states or michigan or new york, canada kid massachusetts. Here's ohio. Here's illinois illinois about twice the loss of Of california. So it's pretty widespread There's one big winner in in a children's business And that's texas the state of texas attracted 578 000 net increase in kids under age 10 Well the nation only had 800 000 increase texas got five eighths or two-thirds Of all the kids that were added in the nation went to texas Because i think because their parents must have gone there The parents went there because maybe there were jobs there We shouldn't send a message to texas is not fair. You can't hoard all the kids We need kids elsewhere, but um, but by and large the nation as a whole it's just about two percent increase These are all the states that had less than a two percent increase And it's widespread it's but it's a more of a national problem because you see these kids They are our national labor pool. They may be living in texas today But texas is educating our future workers And we hope they're doing a good job Now, um, can I just put this in a little bit bigger perspective because i'm not really a children's expert I'm an expert on the bigger demographic Structure and how the kids relate to the other groups So I have to show you all the other groups here and you've seen this This information before this is but while these are the new projections in the census bureau All i'm showing you is the baby boomers But what i'm doing is i'm going to show you the growth from 1990 to 2010 In the last 20 years How many people were added in these age groups and you can see the wave the big green wave Of baby boomers that washed across america These are the millennials down here people talk about them as being the next big generation They're pretty big But they're not that big a wave They're not much greater in size than the people who are ahead of them So they don't have that as much of a boost, but they are pretty good During this period in here, however, you notice we're losing young people If you're using people in these age groups, you're losing parents There was a shortage of parents And so we couldn't have as many kids and if you add a lower birth rate on top of fewer potential parents You're going to have a drop-off in babies, but we sure had a lot of late middle-aged people And I sometimes joke that these are the good guys Well, they're my people the baby boomers But but people that in those age brackets are your peak earners your peak taxpayers your peak homeowners Your peak campaign contributors They are really you know the bread and butter of the american economy and we had a big search In those age groups. So now I have to show you the next 20 years And being a demographer, I always joke that unlike economists, I can predict the future They can't predict interest rates three months ahead I can predict and in 20 years time everybody in this room will be 20 years older And it's not a really big accomplishment, but it's very illuminating. So here you go I'm going to do the prediction using the census bureau's own projections And the the the green wave of the good guys is now moved over here. Now, these are the bad guys now They're taking all the entitlements. It's the same people, of course And they deserve their entitlements But there's a now a big hole in late middle age where we had that big gain before now We're not gaining anybody the millennials are in here. It's a lot riding on them They're going to have to hold up all the working-age population And then we hope there's just many kids that are being added at a fairly low rate But we hope that census bureau is right on that So that's the big picture on the demographics But to put it really into perspective, I have to like look Specifically at the seniors And how many seniors we're going to have relative to the working-age population And so I'm just going to do a ratio of people age 65 and older Divided by working-age and I'm going to call working-age 25 to 64. That's prime working-age And you notice that there's not much to show you here This line here is for LA. No, this is for the U.S. This is for California. This is for LA County It's it's kind of the same in almost every state. It's about 24 seniors per 100 working-age The point is for the last 40 years nothing's changed Anything that's constant is totally tanked for granted Totally invisible Nobody notices it We can't imagine anything different because it hasn't changed in 40 years That's my entire working life Nothing has changed You want to see the next 20 years? It goes up 65 75 80 percent 100 percent in some cases, but in just 20 years by 2030 In the u.s. It goes up a good two-thirds Uh, I looked at all the states in the nation and the state that went up the lowest was Oregon And Oregon went up over 50 percent The senior ratio rises everywhere And the important point of this graph is to point out that This ratio was constant and now now we have to wake up And it's totally predictable I can add 20 and figure this out and yet we're acting like it's not going to change And so it's the source of all our problems really you know about social security. You know about medicare Maybe the workforce replacement crisis. You haven't quite realized these people are all retiring. These are prime workers We got to replace them all these are also big taxpayers and they're they're moving on to Being more recipients We have a deficit crisis because well this is built into the the budgets of the federal government and the state governments And we also have a home seller crisis because one thing the older folks do is they sell homes And who they sell their homes to They sell them the younger folks and what was a nice steady ratio is just Tilted out of balance here So we have to wonder a little bit about who's going to buy your house and it will be a child who's currently in school But in 20 years time, they'll be um in the housing market and we have to get ready help them get ready So the problem is that there's older folks who really deserve their entitlements and they're going to be Uh consuming a lot of the federal budget and there's and there's these kids who we need to really You know invested more heavily And there are some people say well, there's oh gosh There's this conflict of old versus young and they would pick them as being two opposite forces with it With a zero sum pie and they're they're fighting over those shares of the pie And I I disagree with that that framing. I think it's more of an intergenerational partnership Where really there's mutual benefits to be gained And really it's not an animosity at all really there's a lot more love there than you would think So let's look at the responses here to the senior ratio These things are all going to happen They already have happened it it must lead to reduced growth in gdp because there's fewer workers relatively speaking it will be at least the delayed retirement that's already happening And it's going to lead to reducing delayed senior benefits And it's going to lead to higher taxes all these things must happen. It's also going to lead to something really good puts an extreme premium on young people They're going to be really in demand in ways we can't imagine right now because we're in a recession with high unemployment As soon as these boomers just get out of the way It's going to open up enormous positions opportunities for young people if they're ready And it's going to also lead to greater reliance on immigrant workers to help us They're not going to solve all the problems, but they can maybe solve a quarter of the problem And then there's still three quarters to go and we don't know how we're going to do it exactly But one way is it leads to a rediscovery I hope Of neglected minority youth People who have not been used to their full capacity really need to come on board now We need to take everybody really seriously And treat them with the respect they deserved all along, but now we really need them and we need to we need to get them going And be full contributors. So we can't let anybody Anybody drop out of school that idea is crazy That's an idea it's ancient from when we had a surplus of kids And we could afford to let people drop out and we didn't worry about everybody because we had plenty of kids Uh-uh, it's all hands on deck now And we need to really make sure everybody is performing at their optimal abilities and more active counseling We need college financial aid for everybody. We need to have universal preschool. These are all Important for getting a maximum out of every kid we have given the shortage It's not just a nice thing to do But the seniors themselves need this and this is an important message because the seniors are the voters Who control a lot of these purse strings. It's not for the good of the kids only It's really for the good of the seniors So we have a reversal of outlooks back in the old days. It was a high fertility It was too many children growing tax burden and very few elderly and now today everything's reversed As you can see here and we have a shortage of children Not enough taxpayers and workers for the future And the baby boomer tsunami is creating this soaring senior ratio That really will be the centerpiece of our of our social policy for the next 20 years Social and economic policy and so the these the children have are a big part of the solution So it's really a revolution in how we think about the generations So now I want to come to the new importance of children and this is really specific here. How do we measure that? It was in this report. We featured it here also developed it in this other study of la Um where we did our projections for la county And this is supported by the the seal packard foundation. This is about the first five la Where we developed this method it works off of the senior ratio And I call it the ici all it is is figuring out for each kid is born How much of the senior ratio increased by the time they get to be age 25? And and as that ratio grows That puts more and more weight on each kid And that growing weight tells me how much more important they are Simple as that And so it's before it's not like a growing number Um, like we had before not enough children means not enough of all these things And so we want to know how to measure this You know, I I'm not going to go through it the details But it's really just three points here of how to how to do it And it's in the the report there. I can show this to you later Time's a little bit short. So I won't go through the exact math But I just say that when you do this ratio and you play it out You don't look at a kid is born in 2015 It turns out that their ratio looks like this Here's that is it's pretty flat up until 1985 and for kids born in 1985 They would turn 25 in 2010 and starting in 2010 this ratio is rising And so the kid is born after after 1985 is more and more important So that a kid who's now born or will be born in 2015 Is twice as important as kids born back here Twice is important. So what does that mean? We should do about that Well, there's lots of possibilities, but I just want to emphasize one thing which is in policy circles The most important thing is how do you frame the problem? What is the problem and then we'll let people negotiate solutions, but the real battle is over. What is the framing? Given a show as your kids We have to answer this question. Why should I really place greater value on kids? Why should I give them greater priority? For scarce resources when we have so little money, we're in a fiscal crisis. How can we afford money for anybody? Why should I why should I do more than was the usual neglect of the past? Well, why is because of that that index of children's importance was just doubled. That's why it's not like the past is double So we have to make the most out of our fewer children And we have to figure out. Where are they? Who are the new kids? So in the the seal package report domination children, we have a whole section. I think diversity And I asked the question here. So who are these children? On whom society will rely so heavily And it's really presented here as a by the way it happens. These are going to be much more diverse half of the kids in california today are born With um with immigrant parents Um half are also born with um mothers who are latinas And some of those mothers are foreign born some are nato born Majority of of kids are born with parents of color So the point is that first there's a shortage of kids and secondly, whoever they are We need to get the greatest potential out of all of them When you get all hands on deck And it's only fair as a matter of equity that we invest most in those children who are Disadvantaged because they had the greatest upside potential To expand their capabilities and to give us the extra boost that we are going to require Because of people like me Who are going to be the baby boomers swamping the senior ratio All this comes back to a simple philosophy which is lost sight of in american politics American politics is all about today Or the election tomorrow, but it's very short range In reality social policy is a whole lifetime you have to look at people cradle to grave From when they're born all the way through their life And it's a real simple relationship that is actually true in every society on earth It all works the same way there's children born And we invest in the children and then the children lo and behold they grow up at 20 they grow up They become middle aged and then they become seniors and they get to retire and get their entitlements It's a no-brainer, but we forget about because we live in the present We think these children are a separate interest group. They're taking money away from somebody else Well, you're not taking money away. You're investing in them These people here are the big taxpayers and we should give them a lot more respect than we do They are really contributing triple the tax dollars that they ever get back While they're you know in these in this age range, they will get it back later They're going to move to this age. They'll get it back in you know big time But initially they're contributing this way and this way And these kids then grow up and become new workers new taxpayers and new home buyers And they our investment is pays off by the time they get to be age 35 or so And then they of course advance through the cycle This cycle of roles is really the framework that ties everybody together It's the one common denominator that really binds all ethnic groups immigrants and native born all together And why we don't talk about it is beyond me But it's really the simplest way to understand social policy So my conclusions I would ask what's the most surprising finding about everything that we we pulled out of our generational future study for california You know, is it the leveling off of the foreign born? That's kind of surprising Or is it the new majority who are homegrown and born in california not born somewhere else Or could it be this explosion of seniors? That's not surprising Well, maybe it is or is it the scarcity of children? And and the fact of their their doubled importance in the future. Is that the most surprising? I think what it comes down to is really this bottom line here It's just the realization that maybe The generations might actually be connected to each other After all that might be the most surprising thing at least in california politics because we don't act that way And when you see it animated over time the truth of it, I think is inexorable So we have more information available if you'd like to see about it. I thank you very much I'm going to ask Dr. Myers a few questions and then we'll open it up I'm sure a lot of you have many questions you'd like to ask as well We were talking before This presentation about The recognition that oh gosh kids grow up and they kind of they do How does that happen? They actually become the adults that it you know 10 20 years from now We're going to be relying upon and and this I just said Quick kind of personal references is very much coming home to me right now because I have two kids in elementary school One of whom this week is graduating from elementary school or moving up into middle school And I'm kind of shocked that this has suddenly happened to me that I have a child who is actually growing up She's not supposed to do that. She's supposed to stay really little and cute But you too have children who have now they're in the in their 20s. Is that what yeah Kids in their 20s are still kids Um, they're always your kids. Yes. Yeah, they're wandering the country They're in texas actually texas is stealing them back And they're probably they might have kids in texas. They're just gonna make that texas population No, they left them back to california. They're coming back to california But one of them was actually born in texas already. So he's got one foot out in there Well, one of the things that did strike me as very interesting is That it is uneven across the country a bit and in terms of where we're seeing the kind of declines in babies being born and the growth of them and I wanted to to go to that point a little bit more because some might think Oh, well, this, you know, sure. Maybe california. I gotta be a little bit worried there and Yeah, yeah, it doesn't look so good for those, you know, great lake states But you know, that's what's gonna happen when you have cities like Detroit or chicago that are kind of in some financial trouble But you know, we'll figure it out because these other parts of the country Will come through for us. But as you noted earlier as well It's not just that there are places where there's a literally a kind of a decline in the number of babies born It's that we have this Population of baby boomers who are retiring. So no matter even if there were slight upticks in fact in our Growth of children. It still might not be enough To cover what we would need is that Yeah, is that fair assessment? Yeah, I mean really it's uh You can never have enough kids at this point because we made a big mistake early on which is now taken It back I didn't make the mistake, but maybe my parents and their generation they had a lot of kids The baby boom generation is irreversible once it's born It works its way all the way through the system We take advantage of it in some age ranges when and in other age ranges it becomes a burden But there's a lot of them And we have to figure out some way to balance it. We can't just sort of let it be top heavy And so the kids are an important balancing component And even if they grow 2 percent 5 percent 10 percent are still not enough So the fact that we had this shortage Is uh, it It means it's not it's just not erasable The only thing it's really doable is to maximize the productivity of those kids to help them Become the best adults they can be The fullest contributors. They're already the kids are going to be born They may already be be be born And and the baby boomers are still going to be here The only missing link in the middle there is educating the kids to be the maximum producers So just to throw a statistic in here that to me I hold in my mind at the same time I'm understanding some of this population dynamics that you put forward and that is that two-thirds of fourth graders as assessed by the national assessment of educational progress are not reading at grade level Right now in this country. So there That's that that that proficient reading level the level you need to basically be able to do your homework well and to be kind of on track for for Doing well on high school and making it through so two-thirds Of children are not at that level in this country. That's not based on subgroups That's much worse. Unfortunately for for many of our subgroups low-income I'm children from low-income families or children from african-american families and Hispanic families What have you seen in california? That I guess I want to make this a a good and bad question Makes you very worried about those kids when it comes to the educational System there and what gives you hope Well, what makes you especially worried Uh, well, I I worried that will continue with the kids thinking that there's not really a good reason to focus in school They are being very discouraged right now because of the great recession There's really not a lot of jobs available for young people And so why bother? Well, I mean why worry? and I and so I I think that there's also they have older brothers Or people in the neighborhood maybe even in some you know gang bangers who who say don't be a chump Don't be a chump. What are you doing in school? Don't be a chump. You're not getting a job anyway I'm worried that they're going to listen to that And they're going to believe it's going to be true for them too Because five years in it for now when those kids are growing up more it's not going to be like that The congressional budget office has the unemployment rate coming down substantially in just three more years That's before the baby boomer retirements really kick in and as they retire and go out the door They open up all these job opportunities. It's like the 800 pound gorilla sitting on top of the Of the hierarchy in every office they move them away and everybody moves up the ladder And they bring in more young people at the bottom and they move up the ladder So it's gonna be lots of opportunities. I just worry that it won't know this And so the kids won't stay in school They won't have the motivation to really focus because they don't see that there's this hope That's coming down the road here. That's that's that's my greatest worry Now the hope is that there is this open there is this opening. We just have to connect it So and I would add to that I guess my own and this is you're talking my own hope and worry is that My worry is that we're not recognizing then what children would need to number one be be ready to succeed Even at the elementary school level because we're not necessarily as focused on making sure that all children have those opportunities in early learning settings Um and engagement with um with their own parents and other adults that can help them learn But that also we're not as focused on what What will really activate their minds and bring out their kind of curiosity and build their background knowledge So that they can get excited about certain fields and um And and feel like oh, okay. Well, there will be a a career for me at the end of this And and so that brings me some of the other questions I had for you around the Policy implications and the education side of data like this. Um I got to say that at first, you know, when you hear something like oh, there's going to be fewer children or our enrollment numbers may be less There might be some who say oh good, you know, children are expensive. It's kind of what you said earlier More fewer mouths to feed We now have in this country a lot of Debate and controversy and pain around school closings in some places those are um because of Definitely diminished populations of children and there's just not doesn't make as much sense to have as many of those buildings open But we also In as kind of people are thinking about all these things are not necessarily thinking Ahead as you're as you're pointing out. They're not they're just imagining Oh, we can somehow cover our costs better now in these next three or four years because we don't have to spend as much on these kids We won't have to have the lights on in that school building Instead of recognizing that Every single one of this we need to be investing a little bit more In fact in every single one of those children is this playing out of what you've been seeing too Well, you know, I think that you had put your finger right on the big policy struggle right there That the gut reaction is fewer kids. Ah less dollars. Let's cut the budget And yet that's very very short-sighted and it should be the opposite reaction. It should be fewer kids. Oh my gosh We should spend more Because we have to double our our investment in each child so that they can be doubly Productive so that they can hold up twice the load that they're going to have to hold up the load's not going to go away I guarantee you it's not going away And so we have to help them Be the kinds of workers that we need and kinds of taxpayers now There is a there is a formula out there put out by a Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman He calls it a heckman equation And he I'm he has a whole website devoted to this. I'm quite I admire his commitment He's trying to show everybody that the the more you invest in kids and the earlier you invest in them the more they pay back I know it with college going kids that when you invest every dollar in college going They they earn more in income and they pay more in taxes. So we get the return back Four and a half dollars for every dollar we invest that's for college kids But for little kids he says it's even greater He says that as you build the kids skills at age four That then it multiplies over time and it makes them more ready to learn In a fourth grade and it makes it more ready to learn in the eighth grade and it just cumulates So you can't wait until the rate of go to college and say, okay, you know, johnny Have you thought about college? We're going to give you a scholarship to go to college. Well He really should start a little earlier and it sounds like it pays off according to him I'm not going to argue with a Nobel Prize winner on that I will I will say he doesn't understand the demographics or he doesn't recognize it because if he knew there was a shortage It would really make his argument even stronger Interesting. Yeah, certainly many of those of you who follow the work that we do in the early education initiative Know that we've referenced a lot of heckman's research over time English language learners I wanted to get your take on on that from the california perspective Perhaps what you're seeing in some other states From the statistics that came out of one of your report if I'm remembering it correctly It was that nearly half of children in california are in homes where they're the primary language spoken is not english They're in schools that are in many many ways Having to deal with policies around not Not speaking anything but english and yet we have research showing that If you can couple both english and native language In bilingual ways throughout their schooling and education especially in their younger years They even really start with native language building in their younger years They will have a much greater chance of becoming proficient readers and becoming proficient in english So these are issues that we're we're grappling a bit with here at the early education initiative and And connor williams I think is in the room as well whenever our senior researchers who will be looking at What we need to be doing in our education system to make sure that we're helping Children gain english proficiency, but also that we're thinking very forwardly about what bilingual education means So is this something that comes up is you give these talks Around the country or throughout california Do people ask what should we be doing for our english language learners? No For some reason They don't raise it very much. It's interesting that in california. It's not an issue Because it's been there an issue for a long time It's also such a mixed record unfortunately in california Many people who support um bilingual education support it on principle The problem has been an implementation. It hasn't worked out that the kids who go into English learner classes Don't graduate from those classes. They they remain in them a long time and we're not sure why It's a it's an administrative problem So so but the issue is not raised a lot I raise it more often than people raise it to me What I worry about is that the parents don't speak english. How do they help the homework? That's what I wonder about that seems to be a structural problem They can't actually look at the assignments and help the kids one on one The way an english-speaking parent does so that that's got to be um That's got to be a problem. So we need to figure out how to help those kids get homework help Uh without just sort of pushing off on the parents and hoping something happens Right, right So I'll open this for questions in a minute, but as you're speaking it strikes me that here's that here's an opportunity if we have If we're really thinking about an intergenerational partnership and we're recognizing how much kind of we need each other Seniors who have a lot of wonderful skills and have raised children and understand kids in many ways And actually sometimes have more perspective on the tantrums than those are closest to them Enlisting them in the help with With a lot of these kids who may need another adult in their lives to help them Understanding their homework or everything else. I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with that. No, I don't know So let's see Those of you here who have heard this love to get some of your questions And please introduce yourself quickly just mention your name and where you're from and then just make your question As as quick as possible Tired demographer I have no quarrel with the statistics that are presented by professor mire. I do Differ quite a bit from his conclusions For one thing Children and people are talked about only in his presentation only as economic entities They produce they buy That sort of thing And nothing about consuming resources they consume in the market and that creates Jobs and so forth Also as a demographer I I would start with the existence of limits There are limits of physical limits the resource limits even social limits I would also recognize that no population can go increasing forever Uh, somehow somehow it's going to be resolved that they're all going to die and they'll die more Quickly if they're using up their resources and energies and so forth, but another thing You can get to any questions, sir The question is how do you get away with this? I would say though is that the demographic optimum It has three things about it Probably professor mire would agree with this One is that you have a population with low mortality Take that as a good thing because the population with high mortality is one in which children are dying at a very early age Zero to five in particular The second one is that it's an unchanging age and sex distribution ideally This is the optimum because you avoid the great peaks and troughs Such as the sorts of things that are creating the baby boom And the third one is that you have a zero growth rate in recognition of the existence of limits Thank you. Thank you very much for your question. And before I just wanted to mention that we are doing this on on twitter At hashtag support kids. So just wanted to let those out there, especially those listening know that you can follow us on twitter Yes, sir So I I agree with the ideal the zero population growth and um an even distribution in all age groups That's ideal Um, the problem is we haven't got that now We have a big lump as I said the baby boomers And they are now moving up into older ages And that big imbalance is the problem We had to figure out how to handle the imbalance Um And all the solutions that I put on the board there are not desirable raising taxes delaying benefits All these are things that people are fighting against Increasing deficits has been one of our biggest strategies people are fighting against that So it's really a unpleasant situation and but the natural solution is to have more children Who can then balance the um The um The structure more evenly by more children. I'm not saying we should double family sizes mind you This is not, you know, our birth rate right now is below the replacement level you recommend Replacement level is 2.1 babies per woman And the us is running about 1.8 babies per woman That's not going to sustain the population over time that will shrink the population over time But we have a temporary problem, which is these baby boomers for the next 20 years That's we can't get to 2050 Or 2080 which would be the ideal long run without going through 2030 How we get to 2030 is the big hurdle. That's the mountain we have to climb That's the ones that's been avoided in all political discussion because there's no political leader has a solution for it And one thing I've learned in politics is a political leader will not mention a problem. They don't have a solution for It because they don't want to be embarrassed when not you know when the camera goes in in their face and says what's your response mr. Mayor and mr. Mayor always has a response or else. He says I don't know about that problem So they avoided this one the aging problem is a serious issue and it's a long range I wish that we could balance things, but we can't take the baby boomers back. I'm not going back And I am going forward and we need other people to go forward together This will work out if we just realize that the kids we have today are the most precious asset and we're wasting them We're not getting the most out of our kids Thank you. Thank you for that was a very Good question provocative as well and zero population growth piece of this. I think is one that we need to be Adding into the conversation Are there other questions in the room? Yes, right here Hi, my name is john woodman saying from the mccain Institute for international leadership And I was just wondering you mentioned briefly is with the States that have lower than 2 growth and many of the states had negative child growth Where are the the children being born outside of texas? I know texas has a very large per capita child spending for for primary and secondary education But what about the the other for primary perhaps? What about the other states where are the children being born? How is their education programs? Compared to you know the the top tier well, um, a lot of them are In the smaller states And so they don't add up to a lot in the national equation North Dakota I saw on your list, right? North Dakota But all through the south and the big champion probably will be utah as the highest percentage growth in children So the western states and the southern states and primarily the ones But the big states with the exception of florida and texas all the big states are In in this the loser category. It seems like It's great. Thank you And I guess I should answer in terms of just educational resources in some of those states That's a it's a great question And it's one that I don't have an answer off the top of my My head for but I would if I can put in a plug real quick for a database that we do here at the New america foundation called the federal federal education budget project Which is online at FEVP.newamerica.net and there you can go by state and you can look at what federal federal money is coming down into the education system What are the people expenditures by county and by district etc? So let's go to the question in the back Susan you've come from the population dynamics branch at the national institute of child health I'd also like to point out in texas the texas ledge Eliminated all funding for family planning for about six or seven years and put unbelievable constraints on abortion And lo and behold they had more children. They have now put some more money back into family planning But that may also be a Component of why texas has had the growth it's had Very interesting and that's making me want to also look at I mean you had mentioned earlier on your question, you know, whether how much texas is spending kind of per child I'm curious about it's spending in that zero to age eight range or especially in that birth the five That texas does have a pre-k program But it's not something that all children So have access to in there So next time maybe we need to bring a texas person a couple of them into the room and we can learn more about that state So it does that as a as a counterpoint. Yes, sir right here My name is kikuchi and I'm with washington research and analysis. I retired from the bank World Bank 12 years ago and have been looking At the japanese demographic population data every month for 12 and 12 and a half years And whatever all the things you said about california started about 20 years ago in japan And this year there are Probably they're just getting parity between 75 years and older and 15 years and younger There are as many people 75 and over as there are people because my wife's group There were 2.5 million born that year in 1951 And last year there were 1.06 million Kids born in japan now You may the question I had is you showed that Something goes up after 2010 that all the curves It showed that it was going up Is that wishful thinking because it's not going to happen the way things are going in japan it'll keep on declining Thank you. Wow Well, maybe I didn't explain that the senior ratio well enough. It's the seniors divided by working age And japan has a very high Old age dependency like that So japan's you're right has been rising earlier Then than the u.s. Japan's ratio is over 50. I think It's uh, it's way up there Explain the ratio just a little bit more for us elaborate for those who haven't heard of it before Well, so typically you would take the 65 population and older and divide by the total and you say what percent are seniors So, you know, it could be 20 percent seniors That's typically how you do it, but a more functional way to do it is a number of seniors Compared to the number of working age people the working age people represent your taxpayer base And the the workers who make the economy go and the home buyers and renters And so that ratio is is is traditionally called the old age dependency ratio I don't I I've written Published the essay last year on this. I don't Like calling it old age dependency because my mother before she died at 86 was never dependent She drove her own car lived in her own house. She had more money than the rest of us She wasn't dependent anybody And I just don't think dependency is the right way and that old ratio also sort of includes working ages Age 15 and older anybody who's eligible for farm labor is included in our modern information based economy where we go to school I think 25 is a better starting age for that working age So it's it's seniors divided by working age times 100. That's the ratio and uh, it's it's very high in the european countries It's been a little slower to rise in the u.s. And the point I emphasize what it hasn't risen It's totally flat for 40 years and we're asleep. We don't know. It's a big deal And the demographers know about it, but the public doesn't know the voters don't know the leaders don't know So that's why it stays flat and then it takes off And and that it's been shown in the data for we've known that for 30 years No surprise, but now now that it's it's happening people are waking up to it Yes Hi, my name is the doll word ran off in the back of rainbow high university My question is we've been looking at these numbers since 1983 with the nation at risk How do you feel this new information is going to alter educational policy so that we can actually put create policy And implement policy hopefully funded that helps to ensure That those minority students do become the workers that you're talking about I mean that is a key question I mean we've we've kind of known these things all along, but nothing's happened I think you need to shock people and wake them up They just don't take it seriously like it's urgent They don't feel the urgency There's two parts to the policy to being effective. One is you have to show how it's good for somebody It's some that it's be nice for these kids to get an education. It's good for them It's fair for them And the other part is you have to show how there's some kind of social cost If they don't get it And even better if there's a personal cost to the to the decision maker If they don't get it and if you can combine those incentives all moving in the same direction You might get some action The aging the baby boomers is your big moment to get attention Because now it shows what's in it for the majority of these voters And why they should care about these neglected minority kids And I have to just add on that. I mean that that's precisely why I wanted to bring Dr. Myers here. I've had exactly the same questions If you're not familiar with the early education initiative here at the new america foundation This is something that we work on quite a bit is laying out the new policy ideas to ensure that all kids Are getting the opportunities at very young ages to become learners and see themselves as learners and And to really excel not just to not just to kind of get their baseline Yeah, kind of kind of hit a couple tests, but actually really excel and see themselves as The innovators for our country for the future and I a lot of the times in the research on just even What happens in elementary schools you see that kids are fairly curious and they want to kind of They're kind of excited to be at school in those early ages And then something's happening around that fourth or fifth grade mark where the kind of the light's kind of going out of their Eyes a little bit and it really it worries me so much. What have what have we done? In our in our school system, or maybe we haven't prepared those children very well before they even get there or some things changing in our kindergarten first second grade classrooms. It's kind of Taking that that light out of their eyes and so We're looking at you know, what are the things that we can do to make? Classroom experiences incredibly exciting, but to also make sure that all children actually have access to them and that they come very much ready to To just kind of hit the ground running with a lot of everything from home visiting programs to early childhood programs Uh preschool much better preschool access that we need throughout this country much more parent engagement, etc Yeah, it's a whole line of things we should be doing Yeah, no, although, you know, who doesn't yeah What can we say more? I just reflect back on what Lincoln Day. Is that you know, Mr. Day was saying If we could get all these neglected kids to really be become our workers And major taxpayers we wouldn't need as much growth. Would we? Okay, we've got the people here, but we're not using the people we're not deploying All of all of our resources. So there is a a commonality here between reduced population growth and maximizing social policy For for disadvantaged groups that we can make work together and then that would be to the benefit of the boomers I think one of the problems is that you keep talking in numbers rather than percentages We're not going to have any shortage of children. We are going to have a big difference as you find out In the proportion of children are Well, it's fewer children than before so we're I mean, there's a lot of different ways you can talk about what the fewer Means refers to I know we're losing kids right now in california and a lot of other states So we'll see how long that goes on it's projected to go another 10 years at least And that's a hole we'll never recover from those are lost kids You know, they're not born today. They won't you can't make them tomorrow You can't catch up So we're gonna we're gonna close here. I first just want to say it's it's been wonderful to to Have you here to hear some of these statistics to help them help Those of us here use them to think maybe a little bit differently and look at something from a different slant to understand better how to think about making the case for investment in and our young people and And I just really appreciate your your time. Well, I really appreciate the opportunity to share this with you And thank you for bringing these people together. Yeah, thanks everybody