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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Plunging birth rates and strong migration to the United States will lead American Samoa, a self-governing, unincorporated U.S. territory southwest of Hawaii, to lose 61 percent of its 2026 population by 2100, according to new projections by the Census Bureau.
It is the biggest population drop among the four U.S. island territories where the agency says population will decline by then compared to this year, including the U.S. Virgin Islands (down 41 percent), Guam (down 38 percent), and the Northern Mariana Islands (down 17 percent).
These territories “are undergoing long-term population decline driven by falling fertility and persistent out‑migration,” the agency wrote, suggesting that this is going to get dramatically worse by the end of the century.
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Fewer Babies Being Born, More Islanders Leaving
The number of children being born in the U.S. has dropped nearly every year since 2007, reflecting a global crash in fertility rates which has raised concern about its impact on increasingly greyer societies. Between 2007 and 2025, the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in the U.S. had fallen from 69.5 to 53.1.
The total U.S. fertility rate is projected by the Census Bureau at 1.62 children per woman in 2026, below the replacement level of about 2.1. That is down from 2.13 births per woman in 2000, which had marked a reversal in the declines experienced during the 1990s, according to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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The general fertility rate, which relates births to the number of women in the childbearing ages, was 65.3 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years in 2001, about 1 percent lower than in 2000.
Fertility rates have dropped even more dramatically in the four U.S. territories analyzed by the Census Bureau. The total fertility rate in American Samoa plunged from 4.0 in 2000 to 2.1 in 2026, and in the Northern Mariana Islands from 3.3 to 2.0 in just a decade. In Guam, it is now 2.36, down from 3.10 in 2000, while in the U.S. Virgin Islands it is 1.86, down from 2.06 in 2000.
A decline in birth rates alone would not leave these four territories in the situation the agency expects them to be by 2100. But combined with growing numbers of people leaving the islands to go work or study in the mainland, the loss becomes significant.
In 2026, net migration rates ranged from -4.8 per 1,000 in Guam to -25.1 in American Samoa. The number of residents leaving the islands is expected to decrease and reach zero by 2100, but by then not many people will be left living on the territories.
What Happens After A Population Collapse
The expected population drop in these territories would have limited direct consequences for American politics. Residents of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands are generally U.S. citizens by birth, while those born in American Samoa are generally U.S. nationals. But residents of these unincorporated territories cannot vote for president in the general election, and the Constitution does not apply in full to these islands.
Their expected migration to the United States, however, would be more consequential to the country, though some experts say it will help offset the impact of the population’s aging and the decline in birth rates.
An even more important question is who will keep these islands running after the loss of so many residents, which is likely to shrink their workforce, significantly reduce tax revenues, and put pressure on their healthcare system.
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A Government Accountability Office report released earlier this year on the Northern Mariana Islands found that the territory’s “diminishing workforce” has contributed to the weakening of its economic standing in recent years.
Foreign workers currently make up approximately 31 percent of its workforce, and territorial officials said the end of a key visa program that supplements the small local population with foreign workers—the CNMI transitional-worker program, set to end by 2030—would have “severe adverse effects” because the local population will not be able to fill existing vacancies.
While these unfillable vacancies could threaten the islands’ economies, the lack of healthcare workers could threaten residents’ wellbeing. GAO’s research released last year on public-health workforce gaps found shortages across multiple occupations and jurisdictions in the U.S., including territories. The lack of these workers can limit disease investigation, hazard identification and emergency preparedness, the report found, warning that hiring and retention problems are likely to persist in the future.
A population collapse would also have profound implications for the territories’ traditions and culture, especially as young people who have moved to the mainland would not be there to fulfill family obligations. Research by Faye Untalan, an expert on Chamorro culture and diaspora who grew up in Guam, found that political separation and migration have dispersed Chamorro communities, even as family, culture, tradition and language continue to bind them across Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the mainland.
Newsweek contacted Untalan for comment by email on Friday morning.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and Emma Lee-Sang
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