Will Trump Push for Legalization of Undocumented Immigrants?

A story today from the NYTimes suggests that the Trump administration may be willing to go along with a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants who have not committed a serious crime.

President Trump, signaling a potential major shift in policy, told news anchors on Tuesday that he is open to a broad immigration overhaul that would grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious crimes.

“The time is right for an immigration bill as long as there is compromise on both sides,” the president told the TV anchors at the White House, according to people present during the discussion. The people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the private meeting.

When Ronald Reagan successfully proposed such an idea the concern was that legalization would simply encourage a new flood of undocumented immigrants to fill in the low income jobs that might be vacated by people with newly legal status. However, the demographic conditions are very different now that they were then. The birth rate has fallen steadily in Mexico (and in much of the rest of Central America) and Mexico no longer has a huge population of young adults needing to find work. Work has come to them at least partly because of NAFTA, if the truth be known, exemplified by news yesterday on NPR that a ball bearing plant in Indianapolis will be moving its 350 jobs from Indiana to Mexico, because of the difference in pay. One of the goals of NAFTA at the time the legislation was passed was to create a "wall of jobs" that would keep people in Mexico. That and a lower birth rate have, in fact, done precisely that. In the meantime, the economy of the U.S. would almost certainly be much better off with the kind of immigration reform that includes a path to legalization for people already here and participating in the labor force.

The 2020 Census in the U.S. Needs More Financial Support

Tomorrow is the day that the Trump administration will start its roll-out of next year's budget, featuring a talk by Pres. Trump to Congress on the topic. The discussion today is that more money will go to Defense spending at the expense of other government funding. Among the things that really need more money, not less, is the U.S. Census Bureau as it gears up for the 2020 census. This issue caught the attention of the editorial board of the Washington Post a few days ago, and it came to my attention from the Census Project. Here's what the Post has to say:

IN HIS confirmation hearing last month, Wilbur Ross noted he may be the first secretary of commerce nominee who was once a U.S. census taker. Those skills could come in handy right about now: A recent report indicates the 2020 Census is in trouble.

Mr. Ross, who as a business-school student served the Census Bureau as an enumerator in Boston, is scheduled to see a confirmation vote next week. If it is a yes, he should get to work immediately, looking to the report published this month by the Government Accountability Office that includes the decennial among its list of “high risk” operations.

There is a reason the Founding Fathers saw fit to make the census part of the Constitution: The national head count is critical to a functional democracy. Not only is it a vital research tool, but also the census determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives and how district lines are drawn. Any doubt about the data’s validity could cause a crisis in the redistricting battle which will follow the census and affect the elections in 2022 — which is why it is essential that the bureau gets it right.

The census may be the most important thing in government that no one talks about. That the 2020 report could lack integrity would be worrying on its own, and it would be even more so under an administration that has repeatedly displayed a disdain for data. Saving the census would give Mr. Ross an early opportunity to prove that he, at least, cares about accurate numbers.

Keep in mind that the President can propose a budget, but ultimately it has to be approved by both houses of Congress. So, this thing that "no one talks about" needs to be talked about to our elected representatives as the budget process moves forward. 

Spain Appoints New "Sex Tsar" to Help Raise the Birth Rate

Thanks to Todd Gardner at the other SDSU (South Dakota State University) for pointing to a story in yesterday's Independent that Spain has appointed a person whose job it is to help raise that country's birth rate. To be sure, Spain has now begun to depopulate as more people die than are being born, and the country is also experiencing net out-migration. Birth rates are, of course, low throughout southern Europe. In fact, the PRB World Population Data Sheet shows that there is no other region with lower fertility--not even East Asia. What will the 'sex tsar' do? Well, first, she's going to come up with a plan...

In response and faced with an impending population crisis, the government has appointed Edelmira Barreira to the position of sex tsar.

The portfolio was created by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Ms Barreira, a demographic expert, will help draft a document for a national strategy of demographic imbalances.

Theorising why the birth rate was so low in the Mediterranean country, Rafael Puyol, of the IE Business School in Madrid, said people are often too tired after a full day at work and blamed long working hours and late nights for the decrease. He said: “They do not help with making a family. Then a child arrives and it is even worse.”

It's not clear why Rebecca Flood at the Independent asked for the opinion of a business school professor for the story, but with luck, Ms. Berreira knows better than that. I can find no details about her demographic background, but she is currently a senator in Spain's parliament, and the official name is not 'sex tsar' but Demographic Challenge Commissioner.

As I've noted often before, most recently just a couple of weeks ago, getting fertility levels up closer to replacement level almost certainly requires a shift in the cultural attitudes towards women's responsibilities at home. When husbands help out at home, and companies and the government provide child care for working mothers, the birth rate goes up. I doubt that sexual frequency is the problem, unless abstinence is the only means of birth control being used (not likely!). Gender roles are the real culprit.

Fewer Immigrants Because of Brexit Could be a Big Cost for the U.K.

This week's Economist surveys the potential cost to the economy of Britain of pulling out of the European Union and, in the process, lowering the level of net immigration. You will recall that at after the Brexit vote, polls indicated that keeping people out was a major motivation for voting in favor of Brexit, although that was a bigger issue for people who did not live in immigrant-prone areas than those who did, as I noted at the time. The Economist puts the actual immigration numbers in perspective:

Despite the continuing influx, net migration into Britain is hardly out of control, at least compared with other rich countries. On average annually it amounts to about three times the attendance at a Manchester United football match. Compared with their population, Ireland, Australia and Canada see far more new arrivals.

But British concern about immigration has little to do with raw numbers. Even in 1995, when net migration was well under 100,000, two-thirds of Britons wanted it cut. No reference to immigration appeared on the ballot paper, but politicians believe that the Brexit vote represented a desire to “take back control” of the country’s borders. Since then Mrs May and Amber Rudd, the home secretary, have repeated a long-standing commitment to cut annual net migration to the “tens of thousands”.

The story goes on to list the various ways in which lower rates of net immigration would wind up harming the British economy. Although she is not mentioned, the list is clearly reminiscent of the policy paper published by demographer Jane Falkingham of the University of Southampton prior to the Brexit vote. The Economist notes that a major issue is that the aging population of the U.K. is helped along by working age immigrants.

As it stands, the flow of people into and out of Britain tilts the numbers favourably, improving the dependency ratio. Britain exports old, creaky people and imports young, taxpaying ones. More than 100,000 British pensioners live it up in sunny Spain; meanwhile, up to 100,000 working-age Spaniards brave the British cold.

With low net migration, Britain’s elderly would be more burdensome. Workers would need to be taxed more heavily to pay for care for their elders. The government’s fiscal watchdog suggests that by the mid-2060s, with annual net migration of about 100,000, public debt would be roughly 30 percentage points higher than if that figure were 200,000. Taking back control comes with a whopping bill.

So, this is a classic case of "be careful what you ask for." Demographic change everywhere in the world--not just in the U.K.--also means that "you can't go home again" in the metaphoric sense. We all have to come to grips with that fact.

South Korean Women Projected to Have World's Highest Life Expectancy by 2030

A new study out of London, just published in The Lancet, projects that women in South Korea will have the highest life expectancy at birth by the year 2030--possibly reaching 90 years. Why is this the case? BBC News carries the story:

"South Korea has gotten a lot of things right," Prof Majid Ezzati told the BBC News website. "They seem to have been a more equal place and things that have benefited people - education, nutrition - have benefited most people. "And so far, they are better at dealing with hypertension and have some of the lowest obesity rates in the world."

When I first saw the headline on the BBC website about projected increases in life expectancy, I admit to having been a bit skeptical--until I saw that Professor Majid Ezzati at Imperial College London had organized the research. I have known him for many years and he is very good. Among the many other important things he's done, he's been closely involved in the Global Burden of Disease project headed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The paper in The Lancet is actually a great case study for doing cutting edge demographic research on health and mortality. They applied Bayesian modeling to current age-specific mortality rates to calculate life tables with given probabilities of the results being as projected. 

Given the current controversy in the U.S. over the Affordable Care Act, it is very sad--even if not surprising--that the life table projections suggest that the U.S. will move to last among the rich countries in terms of life expectancy for males and females.

"They are almost opposite of South Korea," added Prof Ezzati. "[Society in the US is] very unequal to an extent the whole national performance is affected - it is the only country without universal health insurance. "And it is the first country that has stopped growing taller, which shows something about early life nutrition." The US will be overtaken by Chile, where women born in 2030 will expect to live for 87 years and men for 81.

The lessening of the life expectancy gap between men and women is almost entirely due to the lower rates of smoking among younger men. Women had never smoked as much as men, and as smoking has become less common among men, they are enjoying longer lives. Indonesia--last bastion of the Marlboro man--needs to pay closer attention to these trends.