President Joe Biden said that the U.S. economy was growing “because we welcome immigrants” and that other countries were held back economically by anti-immigration policies.
I mean, that’s arguably a bad move in terms of international relations and maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but…he’s also not really wrong. Japan’s demographic situation is serious, and the Japanese government has been trying to get the public to accept more immigration for a while and been running into friction.
To some extent, they can help mitigate an aging society with relatively-many retired people relying on relatively-few working people by trying to increase labor force participation, and I know that they’ve done that too – trying to get more women working and pushing back the retirement age:
But that can only go so far; having the total fertility rate as low as it is in Japan creates pretty substantial issues.
And it might be better to lead by example here. In the last few years our own total fertility rate has fallen as well. We do better there than pretty much all developed countries, but in general, if you’re going to run a lower total fertility rate, you’re gonna have to make up for it somehow.
We’ve had a history of running very high immigration levels compared to most countries, but we’re currently at a comparatively low level relative to our own history:
In the decade ending in 2020, we saw a lower population growth than any other decade in the history of the country, at 7.4%. Until 1870, there wasn’t a decade where we didn’t grow less than 30% in a decade:
United States: 3.0 people per 1000 population in 2023
Canada: 5.4 people per 1000 population in 2023
Australia: 6.4 people per 1000 population in 2023
Some EU member states are also up there, like Belgium, but that’s due in significant part to internal EU population movement; it doesn’t deal with EU demographic issues in aggregate, if one is to deal with them in aggregate, as there’s also outflow of people from member states with low fertility, like Bulgaria. I kind of wish that Eurostat would start aggregating statistics for the EU as a whole on things like immigration and import/export numbers. They could publish those alongside the individual member state numbers, could do both at once.
I mean, that’s arguably a bad move in terms of international relations and maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but…he’s also not really wrong. Japan’s demographic situation is serious, and the Japanese government has been trying to get the public to accept more immigration for a while and been running into friction.
To some extent, they can help mitigate an aging society with relatively-many retired people relying on relatively-few working people by trying to increase labor force participation, and I know that they’ve done that too – trying to get more women working and pushing back the retirement age:
https://hrmasia.com/japan-approves-law-raising-retirement-age-to-70/
But that can only go so far; having the total fertility rate as low as it is in Japan creates pretty substantial issues.
And it might be better to lead by example here. In the last few years our own total fertility rate has fallen as well. We do better there than pretty much all developed countries, but in general, if you’re going to run a lower total fertility rate, you’re gonna have to make up for it somehow.
We’ve had a history of running very high immigration levels compared to most countries, but we’re currently at a comparatively low level relative to our own history:
In the decade ending in 2020, we saw a lower population growth than any other decade in the history of the country, at 7.4%. Until 1870, there wasn’t a decade where we didn’t grow less than 30% in a decade:
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population-grew-in-2021-slowest-rate-since-founding-of-the-nation.html
IIRC some countries, like Canada and Australia are running higher per-capita rates.
googles
Yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population
15.4% of the US population is immigrant.
21.3% of the Canadian population.
30% of the Australian population.
For 2023:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_net_migration_rate
United States: 3.0 people per 1000 population in 2023
Canada: 5.4 people per 1000 population in 2023
Australia: 6.4 people per 1000 population in 2023
Some EU member states are also up there, like Belgium, but that’s due in significant part to internal EU population movement; it doesn’t deal with EU demographic issues in aggregate, if one is to deal with them in aggregate, as there’s also outflow of people from member states with low fertility, like Bulgaria. I kind of wish that Eurostat would start aggregating statistics for the EU as a whole on things like immigration and import/export numbers. They could publish those alongside the individual member state numbers, could do both at once.
If the US wants to increase the birth rate they should make this country one that’s worth bringing children into.