Depopulation Strikes New England

December 16, 1999

Volume 1/ Number 26

Dear Friend and Colleague:

New England, long a bastion of population control sentiment, home to the lowest birthrates in the nation, is suffering from a growing labor shortage. New Englanders find themselves in the awkward position of having to choose between more immigrants or face the social and economic consequences of depopulation. Another Baby Boom, the “natural” solution to the problem, does not seem in the offing.

Steven W. Mosher

President 

Depopulation Strikes New England Greenspan’s Answer: Increase Net Immigration

POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE – The UNFPA seized upon 12 October 1999 – the date world population was to reach 6 billion – to once again raise the tired specter of overpopulation. Joined by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, they sought to frighten Washington into spending more money on family planning programs, both at home and abroad.

The most significant aspects of the birth of Baby Six Billion were deliberately left unmentioned: World population will never double again. If there is any population crisis in the developed world, it is one of looming depopulation, not overpopulation.

Take the growing labor shortage in the United States. Early in November, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan released a report stating that American productivity and market competitiveness were being threatened by an ever-tightening labor force. How did he propose to address the problem? One suggestion was to increase imports, thus moving American jobs offshore. A second was to expand the workforce, which is hardly possible in a time of record-low unemployment unless you raise the age of retirement. Greenspan’s preferred option, however, was to increase immigration.

What Greenspan didn’t say was this: America’s birthrate has been below replacement since about 1970. There are simply too few young people coming into the workforce to fill available jobs. Another way of putting this is that America’s population growth rate is too low to sustain its current rate of economic growth, which will in turn increasingly affect its competitiveness on the world market. According to the Census Bureau, the present US rate of natural increase is only about one half of one percent annually, and is dropping rapidly. By 2030, barring either a significant increase in the birthrate, or a massive increase in immigration, the US population will be in absolute decline.

The problems this will cause are already apparent in the Northeast. A report issued jointly last week by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University and the non-profit organization Mass INC underscores the social and economic impact of falling birthrates. Entitled The Changing Workforce: Immigrants and the New Economy in Massachusetts, the report highlights Massachusetts’ falling birthrates, and hence its increasing dependence upon foreign immigration for sustaining both the state’s population, and the growth and success of its economy.

The study placed Massachusetts as one of the five US states most dependent on foreign immigration – a dependence resulting from a combination of falling birthrates and domestic out-migration. The report found that, absent foreign immigration, the Massachusetts population would be smaller today than it was in 1970, and that foreign immigrants in Massachusetts were responsible for 82 percent of the net growth in the state’s civilian labor force between the mid-1980s and 1997.

This dependence on immigration for sustaining economic productivity extends throughout the entire Northeast Corridor. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut together with Massachusetts make up the five US states most dependent on immigration to generate labor force growth. If not for foreign immigration, the current labor force of the entire New England region would be 200,000 workers less than it was in 1990.

“Many New Englander’s have voluntarily adopted a one-child policy, justifying their selfishness by an appeal to the myth of overpopulation,” said PRI President, Steven W. Mosher. “Having chosen fewer children, they will either admit more immigrants or watch creeping economic stagnation infect the entire region. ‘Give me your tired huddled masses yearning to breath free’ will be in effect rewritten to say ‘Give me your tired huddled masses . . . to fill our emptying classrooms, take our vacant jobs, and support us in our old age.'”

If birthrates continue to fall according to current projections, Massachusetts and the Northeast Corridor will be joined by more and more states in their dependence on foreign immigration. This slow-burning demographic implosion will be one of the principal challenges facing the US during the next millennium.

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