Phillip Longman
Encyclopedia
Phillip Longman is an American demographer
Demography
Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...

. Presently he is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation
New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, CA. It was founded in 1999 by Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, Michael Lind and Walter Russell Mead....

, and he formerly worked as a senior writer and deputy assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report.

Personal Life and Education

The son of Kenneth and Mary Longman, who worked in Baden-Württemberg as a result of the postwar occupation of that state (and Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

) by the US military, Phillip Longman spent most of his childhood in Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...

, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

. He studied at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

 and later obtained a Knight-Baghot fellowship at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

Phillip Longman was originally married to the late Robin Longman, but after she died he married Sandy Garbrecht. They have one son, Sam, and reside in Washington DC.

Career

Focusing his attention on how demographic and social change interact and affect government finance, the environment, foreign policy, and the development of society generally, Longman published his first book, Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America in 1987. In the following decade wrote many articles about the impact of aging populations on society in the future. During this period, his name became much more widely known in the academic community: his articles became published by such journals as The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

, Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

, Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives,...

, Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...

and The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

.

In 1997 Longman published his second book The Return of Thrift: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State will Reawaken Values in America, which argued that people today are spending in an unsustainable manner with the accelerating decline in fertility rates
Total Fertility Rate
The total fertility rate of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates through her lifetime, and she...

 threatening the financial collapse of the welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...

 throughout the world. By 2000 he had linked with the New America Foundation and began work on his most widely read work, The Empty Cradle in March 2004. This book expressed his strongly held opinion that sub-replacement fertility
Sub-replacement fertility
Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate that leads to each new generation being less populous than the previous one in a given area. In developed countries sub-replacement fertility is any rate below approximately 2.1 children born per woman, but the threshold can be as high as 3.4...

 and resultant population decline is likely to have catastrophic economic consequences for those nations suffering from it and is also likely to reduce societies' ability to adjust to newly emerging problems because of unwillingness to innovate or take risks. It also examines the present effect of the rapid fall in birth rates around the globe.

His recent research into the history of demographic decline in ancient Greece and Rome led to an article titled The Return of Patriarchy in the March, 2006 issue of Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...

, and in other journals in an edited form under the title The Liberal Baby Bust. On January 1, 2007, his fourth full-length book was published by PoliPointPress. Titled Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare is Better Than Yours, it reflects on Longman's loss of his first wife to cancer and aims to show that in fact private health insurance is not superior to public health care as is often presumed.

Awards

Phillip Longman has won numerous awards for his business and financial writing, including UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award
Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...

, and the top prize for investigative journalism from Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Books

  • Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America (1987)
  • The Return of Thrift: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State will Reawaken Values in America (1997)
  • The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It (2004)
  • Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare is Better Than Yours (2007)

Links

Phillip Longman's page at the New American Foundation
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