America Benefits From Immigrants--But It's Complicated

Thanks to Justin Stoler for pointing me to an op-ed in the NYTimes by Ruchir Sharma promoting the idea that immigrants are good for the American economy and will be the answer to "making America great again."

The underlying growth potential of any economy is shaped not only by productivity, or output per worker, but also by the number of workers entering the labor force. The growth of the labor force is in turn determined mainly by the number of native-born and immigrant working-age people. Over the last two decades, the United States’ advantage in productivity growth has narrowed sharply, while its population advantages, compared with both Europe and Japan, have essentially held steady.

What makes America great is, therefore, less about productivity than about population, less about Google and Stanford than about babies and immigrants.

The growing importance of the population race will be very hard for any political leader to fully digest. Every nation prefers to think of itself as productive in the sense of hard-working and smart, not just fertile. But population is where the real action is.

The complication here is that the discourse about immigration in this country routinely ignores the fact that as much we may not want undocumented immigrants, the economy is more dependent on exploiting this pool of "enslaved labor" than we would like to think. The most recent example is Case Farms in Ohio which uses undocumented Central American immigrants to "process" its chickens for sale to the public. As an article in The New Yorker points out "the law makes it hard to penalize employers, and easy for employers to retaliate against workers." So, who benefits disproportionately from undocumented immigrants? It is not hard to believe that the answer is the rich--thus contributing to the growing unfairness in the country's distribution of income and wealth.

The work done by the millions of exploited undocumented immigrants keeps prices lower than would otherwise be the case, thus effectively raising the standard of living for everyone else (not just the rich). Exploiting labor is also why Walmart got rich by selling stuff made in China and elsewhere in Asia where the "inconvenient" costs of reasonably paid labor and environmental controls do not have to be built into the cost of making things. 

At the same time, those who want to deport undocumented immigrants (without understanding the cost to the economy of doing that) point to the long line of people waiting to get into the country legally. The problem there is that a very high fraction of those people are family members of current legal immigrants who may or may not be potential workers and, even if they are, may not have the skills that the economy needs. They are invited in for reasons of family reunification (humanitarian reasons) rather than any reasons having to do with economic need or benefit to the country. 

So, it is way too simple to suggest that more immigrants will make America great again (whatever that really means!). Yes, the entire history of the country has been built around immigration, but we need to be willing to reform our immigration policies in large and important ways, and I have not seen anyone in politics willing to tackle this.

UPDATE: More people or more government spending (i.e., no tax cuts!) on infrastructure and education? Read this piece by John Mauldin and see what you think.

The Cultural Demography of Arab Society

This week's Economist has a very interesting article discussing gender roles in Arab society. The subtitle of the story  is "the sorry state of Arab men," but to me this is a story about how demography and culture interact.

A new survey by the UN and Promundo, an advocacy group, examines Arab men’s views on male-female relations... It finds that around 90% of men in Egypt believe that they should have the final say on household decisions, and that women should do most of the chores.

So far, so predictable. But the survey sheds new light on the struggles of Arab men in the four countries studied (Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine) and how they hinder progress towards equality. At least two-thirds of these men report high levels of fear for the safety and well-being of their families. In Egypt and Palestine most men say they are stressed or depressed because of a lack of work or income. Women feel even worse, but for Arab men the result is a “crisis of masculinity”, the study finds.

Far from relaxing their patriarchal attitudes, Arab men are clinging to them. In every country except Lebanon, younger men’s views on gender roles do not differ substantially from those of older men. There may be several reasons for this, but the study suggests that the struggle of young Arab men to find work, afford marriage and achieve the status of financial provider may be producing a backlash against assertive women. In other words, male chauvinism may be fuelled by a sense of weakness, not strength.

My interpretation of what is happening in these societies is that past population growth--fueled by birth rates that have not dropped as quickly as child mortality rates--has not been met by equally rapid economic growth. The region really does not have the resources to support the population that currently lives there, unless you are one of the lucky ones with oil reserves, and even that won't last forever. That is the source of weakness that helps to perpetuate traditional attitudes of patriarchy. And keep in mind that these traditional gender role ideas are not peculiar to Arab society--we find them all over the world, including in places here in the U.S. They also popped up in an article just published yesterday in Demographic Research, in which the authors report on their interviews with second-generation Turkish-Germans who find "refuge" in Antalya, Turkey--a Mediterranean seaside resort town in southwest Turkey where some of them have escaped from the traditional family attitudes that prevail among Turkish immigrants (their parents) in Germany. Hmm, this is more complicated than I thought...

Canada's Demographic Disaster or Dividend?

You may have seen the news over the past couple of days that Canada's seniors outnumber children for the first time ever. The Canadian Broadcasting Company presented this story in terms of an impending disaster.

There are now 5.9 million Canadian seniors, compared to 5.8 million Canadians 14 and under. This is due to the historic increase in the number of people over 65 — a jump of 20 per cent since 2011 and a significantly greater increase than the five per cent growth experienced by the population as a whole.

"As people get older, they need more health care, more home care, and that puts increasing demands on government spending," says Dr. Frances Woolley, economics professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. "There are big challenges for the government coming on the fiscal side."

But thanks to Abu Daoud for linking me to another story from CTV News noting that Canada's demographic dividend hasn't yet ended. The population aged 15-64 is still large relative to the younger and older populations and that's a good thing.

That gives Canada a few more years to benefit from what Statistics Canada calls a "demographic dividend": a growing labour force while other countries watch theirs shrink. Eventually the numbers will decline in Canada as well, once populations age and retirements take hold, said Statistics Canada demographer Andre Lebel.

Projections about how long Canada will benefit from those dividends depends in part on immigration, which is the key to the modest gains thus far in the labour force, said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

Much will also depend on the sorts of policy decisions officials have wrestled with for years as they seek to prevent a coming crush of retirements from triggering an economic slowdown.

And the last point is especially important. Demography is destiny only in the sense that if you know what the possible demographic trajectories are, you can make plans to avoid the poor outcomes and enhance the better outcomes. That's what population policy is all about. 

Nutrition Transition Catches Up With Latin America

For most of human existence, the food supply was precarious and famines were common. The industrial revolution and changes in modern farming practices have made more food available per person than at any other time in human history. But there is a precarious balance between what we eat and our health. As a species we are working our way through the nutrition transition, as described by Barry Popkin and his associates 25 years ago. The current phase in that transition involves a marked worldwide shift toward a diet high in fat and processed foods and low in fiber, accompanied by lower levels of physical exercise, leading to corresponding increases in degenerative diseases. There is no better evidence of that than a report out this week from the UN World Food Programme highlighting the rise in obesity in several Latin American countries. The Guardian summarizes the report (the original of which is in Spanish).

More than two-thirds of people living in Mexico, Chile and Ecuador are overweight or obese, costing their economies tens of billions of dollars every year, driving rates of disease and straining health services, according to a new UN report.

While the number of hungry people in Latin America and the Caribbean has halved in the past 25 years, the region is now struggling to combat an obesity epidemic.

Changing diets, including more processed food that are high in salt, sugar and fat, along with more sedentary lifestyles have triggered a rising tide of obesity, experts say.

This is not just a "rich country" phenomenon. My colleagues and I have found the same patterns emerging in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa. Not enough food will kill you, but too much food of the wrong kinds (especially in combination with a more sedentary lifestyle that comes with modernity) is also not good for you. Eat enough, but eat smart.

Trump Picks Woman Who Doesn't Believe in Contraception to Head Federal Family Planning Program

You really cannot make this stuff up!! The Trump administration has just picked a woman who has said that contraception doesn't work to head up the family planning program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Among many media outlets, Huffington Post has the story:

President Donald Trump has appointed Teresa Manning, an anti-abortion activist who has argued that “contraception doesn’t work,” to oversee a federal family planning program for low-income Americans. 

Manning, a former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee and legislative analyst for the conservative Family Research Council, will serve as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. The Office of Population Affairs administers the Title X program, which subsidizes contraception, Pap smears and other preventive health care services for 4 million low-income Americans, roughly half of whom are uninsured.

Manning has said she opposes federal family planning funding, and she has a long history of making false claims about birth control and women’s health.

Manning has referred to abortion as “legalized crime” and mistakenly argued that emergency contraception, which can prevent pregnancy for up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, is “the destruction of a human life already conceived.” (It’s not.) She has also claimed that the link between abortion and breast cancer is “undisputed,” when there is actually no evidence of a causal relationship between the two.

The assault on women's reproductive rights in this country--an attack which has been ongoing--seems to have reached a new level. To quote from various of Donald Trump's tweets--SAD! [TRAGIC might be the better word, in this case.]