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300,000,000

A speculative profile of a record-setting American

By SUSAN ASCHOFF
Published October 17, 2006

This morning, perhaps even as you are reading these words, America will get its 300-millionth person.

The milestone will be reached at about 7:46 a.m., the U.S. Census Bureau reports. Who is this 300-millionth? We cannot know. It could be a baby born or an elderly immigrant arrived. But by studying the country’s demographics and trends, we can speculate on this human marker.

We created a fictional 300-millionth American, making up specifics about his life and how it might unfold based on actual statistics.

He (yes, it’s likely to be a man) isn’t real, but everything about him, from his name to his funeral, is based on research about American lives. He’s a slice and a stew of who we are and where we are headed.

It’s a boy

He is a Hispanic male.

He will be born at 7:46 a.m. today in Los Angeles County, where birth rates are high, especially among Hispanic women. His mother is a 26-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen. She works as a manager at a hotel. His father, 30, works construction.

His name is Antony, a popular name given a special spelling by his mother, following a trend to personalize names.
She goes back to work six weeks later, and baby Antony is cared for by a neighbor.

Childhood

When Antony is 9, his family moves to Dallas so his father, who has become a U.S. citizen, can work in construction with a cousin.

Antony and his older brother and sister go to public schools. When they are older they all get part-time jobs to pay for downloads for their electronics, but their parents make them save for college as well. Antony is good at math and decides he wants to work in finance. He decides he will wear custom suits and drive a Lexus.

Charting a career

Antony goes to Arizona State University and majors in business. It’s a growing university and not too far from home. After graduation he works for a year, then earns a master’s in business administration.

A year after Antony finishes graduate school, he moves to fast-growing Sacramento, Calif., for a state government job in the benefits and compensation department.

He is now 26. He and his friends talk a lot about investments because they do not have pensions and there is legislative support to dissolve Social Security. He is grateful the government instituted universal health care
in 2016.

Family life

At a party, Antony meets Emma Johnson. She is 32, white and Methodist. She is the single mother, by choice, of a 4-year-old daughter.

A year later, Antony, 28, marries Emma in a Catholic church in Dallas.

Emma, worrying about the job market, opens a luxury dog grooming spa and kennel. It turns a profit after 18 months. Antony is promoted several times. His suits are off the rack and he drives a used electric Lexus. On the freeway, he must have at least one passenger under the carpooling law.

Antony and Emma have two more children. Their daughter grows up and works as a nutritionist for an assisted living center. Their eldest son is 22 when he dies serving in a U.N peacekeeping force after a U.S.-Japan invasion of North Korea in 2055.

Their youngest son studies genetic counseling and maps newborns for disease risks.

Middle age and beyond

When Antony is 44 and Emma is 49, harried with work and family demands, they separate. A year later, they reconcile.

By 2060, Antony manages the state land and water conservation office. He fishes in Cozumel and she skis in Tahoe. They travel to see grandchildren in Fort Myers or invite family home to Sacramento when the national airline discounts fares.

Antony lives 85 years. He suffers a stroke while carrying groceries into their retirement condo in Las Cruces, N.M.

Emma respects his living will when he suffers a second stroke in the hospital.

Emma hosts a celebration of life ceremony at a nearby resort. Family and friends eat and dance and cry. Emma bypasses the community mausoleum and carries Antony’s ashes into the mountains.

She tosses them west toward California, north to Nevada, east to Texas and south to Mexico.

Editor’s Note: The people described in this profile are fictional but based on actual statistics, forecasts and trends charted by academics, media, business and federal and state governments. For example, the odds are that the 300-millionth person will be a white male newborn because the majority of U.S. residents are white. But Hispanics account for half the nation’s growth, compared with 18 percent for whites and 14 percent for Asians.
 

[Last modified October 16, 2006, 21:41:42]