Cowen: Amish population growth is bounded by reliance on external subsidies
Tyler Cowen · Tyler Cowen Doesn't Think America Should Ban Chinese AI Models · Jul 20, 2026 · at 22:19
Economist Tyler Cowen pushes back against demographic projections extrapolating high Amish birth rates into a massive share of the future US population.
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“It's possible because the surrounding society cross-subsidizes them. So you can't have a third of America being Amish. And I think they keep people in the fold because it is pretty small and tightly knit. And were there, say, three or four million Amish, which we're very far from, the rate of leaving would be much higher. So I think it's bounded on the upside.”
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