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Population growth is due to two factors: fertility and immigration.



Fertility: The U.S. average fertility rate is currently 2.1335 births per woman, the U.S.’s highest fertility rate since 1971. (For comparison, the United Kingdom’s fertility rate is 1.7, Canada's is 1.4, and Germany's is 1.3.)



Immigration: Immigration contributes over one million people to the U.S. population annually. The total foreign-born population in the U.S. is now 31.1 million, a record 57 percent increase since 1990. About 8 million of those are here illegally--a 4.5 million increase since 1990. Almost one-third of all immigration during the 1990s was illegal.

An NPG demographic analysis of age distribution, fertility, and mortality data shows that if there had been no immigration to the U.S. since 1990, the population in 2000 would have been 262 million–19 million less than the 281 million counted. Thus, post-1990 immigrants and their children accounted for 61 percent of population growth during the last decade.