The fertility value necessary to maintain the size of a
population is generally taken to be 2.1.
This means that the average female in that population must have 2.1
babies or more if the population is to sustain itself numerically. Most of the developed countries now have
fertility values that are well short of this, spanning the range from 1.1 to
2.0. In Wikipedia are provided several estimates of national fertilities. Consider those from a 2014 tally by the World
Bank. A few countries are hovering near
breakeven such as Ireland, France, and New Zealand (2.0), and USA, UK, Sweden,
Norway, and Australia (1.9). But these
contrast with Hong Kong (1.1), South Korea and Singapore (1.2), Portugal,
Poland, and Spain (1.3), and Italy, Japan, and Germany (1.4).
Some of these low fertility countries have been, and
continue to be economic powerhouses. The
conventional wisdom among economists warns that these countries are not on a
sustainable path. Low fertility leads to
a falling population with ever more older people and ever fewer working-age
people to earn the income that will be necessary to finance the care of the
elderly. Immigration is touted as the
solution. Bring in workers from other
countries—hopefully, with higher fertilities—to fill the perceived employment
shortfall.
Immigration has been an effective way to fill labor
shortages, but is it a long-term solution for a falling population, or merely a
short-term fix? It has been claimed that
it only takes a generation for newcomers to fall into step, fertility-wise,
with the culture they settle into. If
the newcomers acquire the social characteristics of the native population, then
not much will have happened demographically; the population will have been
increased, but the same downward trend will continue.
A recent article in The
Economist sheds some light on this issue.
It was titled Fecund foreigners?
“Xenophobes and xenophiles share
a belief in the fecundity of newcomers. ‘Immigrants are more fertile,’
explained Jeb Bush, an erstwhile American presidential candidate (and
xenophile) in 2013. ‘They love families and they have
more intact families, and they bring a younger population.’ That is still just
about true in America, but the gap is vanishing.”
“Between 2006 and 2013 the
fertility rate among Mexicans in America fell by 35%, compared with a drop of
3% among non-Hispanic whites. In the Netherlands, the immigrant fertility rate
is now almost exactly the same as the native one. Even in Britain, where a
quarter of births are to immigrants, statisticians reckon that immigration has
raised overall fertility by a mere 0.08 children per woman.”
What is referred to as “acculturation” seems to be a
powerful force.
“But the big reason immigrants’
birth rates are falling is that they tend to adopt the ways of the host
communities. This happens fast: some studies suggest that a girl who migrates
before her teens behaves much like a native. Acculturation is so powerful that
it can boost birth rates as well as cut them. In England, migrants from
high-fertility countries like Nigeria and Somalia have fewer babies than
compatriots who stay put. Those from low-fertility countries such as Lithuania and
Poland have more.”
The article focuses of the industrial German town of
Duisburg where a large number of immigrants, mainly Turks, came to work in the
factories in the postwar years.
“In the early 1980s women with
foreign passports in Duisburg had a birth rate much higher than native
Germans….Most of the foreigners were Turks, who had settled in this Ruhr Valley
city for its industrial jobs and brought their big-family culture with them.”
This chart is provided to illustrate the effect of
acculturation on the birth rate.
The foreign-born reproduced at a healthy rate—at least
for a while. However, within a generation
or so their fertility fell to the same low level as that of the native Germans.
“Christine Bleks, who runs a
children’s charity near Weseler Strasse, points to the front gardens of houses
around Duisburg’s large mosque. They are small and orderly, with neat hedges
and kitsch ornaments. The style is stereotypically German, she says. But the owners
are mostly Turkish. As with gardens, so with families: immigrants have gone
native.”
So if you happen to believe that falling populations are
a problem, don’t count on immigration as a long-term solution.
The interested reader might find the following articles
informative:
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