The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“Immigration will figure prominently in the 2024 presidential campaign, continuing its run as one of the nation’s longest-running and most divisive issues. . . Striking the right balance is complicated, but it starts with grappling seriously with the question of what level of immigration would be optimal.
“The answer: A lot more — at least if the US wants to slow the graying of its population and stave off long-term population decline, demographers say.
“This decade probably will experience the smallest percentage population growth in U.S. history, said Brookings Institution demographic expert William Frey. That’s partially the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased death rates and caused some couples to postpone having children. But even with the pandemic receding, the US is heading for very little growth in the years to come. That’s a huge change from the past. Since 1900, the US population mostly grew between 1 percent and 2 percent each year. The exceptions came during traumatic periods — the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919, the Great Depression. Now, according to Census Bureau projections, the country is, at most, likely to have about 4 percent population growth over this entire decade. The rate will slow further after that.
“Should you worry about that? Some people would say no. Among environmental activists, for example, some take the view that fewer Americans would be a good thing because our lifestyle uses more resources than in other countries. But there are other ways to reduce the American impact on the global environment — greater reliance on renewable energy, for example. And a US population decline imposes real, and heavy, costs. If you plan to retire, or care about the country’s military strength or its economy, an aging or declining population is definitely something to be concerned about. An older population with a shrinking number of workers makes paying for Social Security or other retirement programs much harder, for example, because there are fewer workers to support a growing number of retirees.” – America Needs an Immigration Debate—Not Just the One We’re Having, David Lauter, Los Angeles Times, 1/19/24 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: The author claims he wants a balanced debate on immigration, and then proceeds with the unbalanced notion that we must increase immigration even higher than today’s record levels. The reason, he maintains, is that we have an aging population which will bring about economic problems. Therefore, we must increase immigration to lower our average age. This claim often goes without question, but in fact it is highly questionable. The reality is that immigration, under current priorities, will not substantially lower our age level. And this would be the case even if we greatly increased immigration. Among the reasons, the average age of immigrants we accept is increasing, and their fertility rate is declining.
To illustrate, if we ended immigration now, by 2060 we would have a working-age population (16 to 64) of 57 percent. If we were to increase immigration by one and a half times, the working age population would only be 60 percent by 2060.
Another point to keep in mind is that the future need for workers won’t be as high as some people now claim. Within the next decade or two, many of the jobs now done by people will be automated, as robotics and artificial intelligence continue to advance.
The idea that a nation must have a constantly rising population in order to prosper is debatable. It is true that more people increase the size of a country’s GDP, but this does not necessarily increase a country’s prosperity. A better measure of that is per capita GDP. To illustrate, India has a vastly greater GDP than the Netherlands, but the Dutch people on average are richer than Indians.
Another way of looking at GPD is the case of Japan. Its population is declining, so, according to conventional wisdom, it must be sinking into poverty. But as recent article in The Wall Street Journal points out, the Japanese are still fairly prosperous. The indicator which reflects this, says the article, is a further refinement of per capita GDP, which is GDP per working age adult. That figure, which is rising in Japan, is the key to nation’s wealth. This is happening in Japan, in part, because extensive automation is increasing individual productivity.
Prosperity depends on a lot of things. One this author doesn’t mention is a shared sense of community and culture, so that people can work together to prosper. The diversity and division brought by mass immigration doesn’t promote this kind of cooperation at all.