ASSIMILATE OR ELSE :

18: The Coming Battle for Immigrants : The ability to absorb foreigners could determine whether nations in the industrialized world will grow or stagnate (Stephen Baker, AUGUST 26, 2002 , Business Week)

Due to plunging birth rates, the number of children under 15 has shrunk by 23% in Europe since 1970. And the shift will continue. There still are four working-age people to support every European aged 65 or older. In a few decades, predicts the U.N. Population Div., that number will fall to two. The pattern is just as dramatic in Japan and Korea, and to a lesser degree in the U.S. A few decades hence, big developing nations like China, Russia, Brazil, and Thailand also will see a surge of retirees. By 2050,
the average age of the world is expected to rise from 26 today to 36. In Spain, the average age by mid-century should hit 55.

The economic implications are huge. Who will do the work in geriatric societies? Who will support the burgeoning class of pensioners? And what will happen to growth? After all, in addition to productivity, a rising labor force is the key ingredient of economic expansion. Harbingers of a stagnant future already are seen in Japan, a nation that seems content to live off its savings, and in Italy.

Wealthy nations have another choice: to import workers on an unprecedented scale. That's essentially what the U.S. has been doing for the past two decades as the baby-boom generation matures. The U.S. takes more than 1 million immigrants annually, including illegals. That is one key reason economic growth has averaged 3.7% a year for the past decade. Immigrants have supplied crucial technical and scientific talent, founded thousands of Silicon Valley startups, and helped hold down prices by filling low-wage jobs.

If the rich nations other than the U.S. choose to keep immigrants out, they will have to achieve radical gains in productivity to keep their economies from hitting a wall. According to one estimate, Europe must boost its productivity by two-thirds before 2020 just to keep its economy from shrinking. But that requires investment in labor-saving machinery and new plants. "And who will invest in these countries if their markets are shrinking and they won't have an adequate labor supply?" asks Paul S. Hewitt, co-author of a
two-year study of the economic impact of global aging by the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.

This story is from a Business Week issue on 25 IDEAS FOR A CHANGING WORLD. An awful lot of awfully smart people, mainly libertarians and Leftists, seem completely unwilling to face the magnitude of this problem which, at a minimum, we should be confronting by limiting abortion; encouraging marriage and larger families; and a greater emphasis on citizenship and traditional Western Culture in our schools. We need to produce more kids of our own and do a better job of teaching our own kids and the children of immigrants what it means to be an American. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 11, 2002 6:51 AM