Understandably recent debates about immigration, both under Labour and now with the lively debates within the Coalition over an immigration cap (or colander, as the case may be) has focused in on the short-term perspective of what policy is appropriate for the next few years for the UK. The wider context however is very striking:
Close to half of the world’s population now lives in countries with fertility rates below the replacement level, which, as a rough rule of thumb, is 2.1 births per woman. In these states – absent steady compensatory immigration – current childbearing patterns will lead to an eventual and indefinite depopulation. Almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birthrates more than 20 percent below the level required for long-term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s populations with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…
It is not known how long a society that has entered into sub-replacement-fertility mode will stay there: Japan, for example, began reporting sub-replacement fertility in the 1950s and has had uninterrupted sub-replacement fertility since the early 1970s. Demographers, it should be emphasized, still have no reliable techniques for making accurate long-term fertility forecasts. Nevertheless, some specialists argue that ultralow fertility rates may be but a harbinger of future – and currently unimaginable – fertility declines. (Nicholas Eberstadt, Foreign Affairs [£])
Although the article goes on to speculate on the global impact of these potential demographic changes, if they turn out to be even close to correct they suggest that over the next few decades the big immigration challenge for Western governments will not be about how to reduce or control immigration but about how to attract enough immigrants.
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10 Comments
Falling population is a good thing. Long may it continue.
Some interesting research on the issues is being done by the Ramphal Centre. http://www.ramphalcentre.org/
Your final point seems to assume that there is some reason why we need to maintain overall population levels.
Surely a long term decreasing population is a good thing, particularly if most people are living longer and healthier lives?
We just need to slowly and steadily increase the average working life over time to keep up with better life expectancy.
But global population is growing, which suggests that the other half of the population live in the world’s poorer countries with fertility rates that are more than making up for the under-replacement of the richer half.
So sticking to the premise that immigration levels are something that is controlled for a country’s need, while there may be a growing demand for immigrants to help balance demographic ageing, it also suggests that the supply of potential immigrants will also grow.
David Pollard, I presume you think that because of the environmental impact of a growing population? The problem is that falling population is linked to higher development which in turn is linked to a larger resource consumption rate.
But global population is growing, which suggests that the other half of the population live in the world’s poorer countries with fertility rates that are more than making up for the under-replacement of the richer half.
As Eberstadt pointed out: “developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s populations with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…”
America’s fertility has gone up quite a bit in recent years, our own has increased more slightly. The way things are going, in fifty years fertility might be higher in the West than in the rest of the world. And still below the replacement rate.
from a global environmental pov, yes falling population is a good thing.
But from a national economical one, fewer people means really fewer young and WORKING people, so less tax revenue and less people to pay and care for an increasing number of older people (and their retirement, health and social care).
The British isles will be among the very few places in the world that will remain temperate for the next 100 years as climate change takes hold, so there will be no difficulty at all in keeping them populated. Keeping unwanted people out will remain a key task for government, particularly if it becomes much harder than now to import our food as world wide production falls.
It may be that we Liberals will not be able to contribute much to the politics of this except some ostentatious hand wringing in the background.
I am not impressed with the observation ….’that we Liberals will not be able to contribute much to the politics of this except some ostentatious hand wringing in the background…’
If that is all we can do then best gently shut the door and….emigrate.
Britain is a nation built with immigrants and on immigration. Our culture, our industry, our science, technology, design and research and our food and our travel, literature and art are all built on the bricks of hundreds and hundreds of years of immigration.
Include environmental and green issues, birth rates, working age, contribution to pensions etc. if you wish, but the
fundamental reason for enlightened views on immigration is that it is the right thing to do. And we are Liberal Democrats and we believe in that. Don’t we?
Jonathan W: you are profoundly mistaken.
For some reason nearly all liberals have got a hugely exaggerated notion of the scale of WW1 immigration, though I notice that they never give any numbers to quote any sources to back up their blithe assertion that ‘Britain is a nation built with immigrants and on immigration.’ And no wonder, because it’s nonsense:
‘ . . The Norman invaders of 1066 were the first true wave of immigrants, and they were small in number. About 10,000 Frenchman arrived with William the Conqueror, representing about 1 % of the population. The total number of Normans settling in England never exceeded 5 % of the population, although their cultural influence was out of proportion to their numbers.
If the Norman invasion represented the first wave of immigration by violence to be experienced by England after its acquisition of nationhood it was also the last. As George Trevelyan wrote in his History of England (1926): ‘Since Hastings there has been nothing more catastrophic than a slow, peaceful infiltration of alien craftsmen and labourers – Flemings, Huguenots, Irish and others – with the acquiescence of the existing inhabitants of the island.’
These famous historic waves of immigration were small: French Protestants fleeing religious persecution, known as Huguenots, began arriving in Britain in the sixteenth century, and came in much larger numbers after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. They settled initially in the East End of London and became successful entrepreneurs, especially in the silk industry. However, their overall numbers cannot have exceeded 50,000, representing about 1 % of the population.
The wave of Jews escaping the pogroms who began to arrive in London towards the end of the nineteenth century represented an even smaller percentage increase to the population. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century there were 155,811 Jewish immigrants, and even if we include immigration between the two world wars, their numbers would not have been much over 225,000 – representing about 0.5 of the population.
In contrast, in 2004 and 2005 net foreign immigration was 342,000 and 292,000 respectively, representing an increase in the population of 1 % in 2 years. Earlier waves of immigration like the Huguenots and the Jews increased the population by 1 % or less over a period of decades, . . ‘
From a review of: ‘A Nation of Immigrants? A brief demographic history of Britain’ by David Conway; Civitas, 77 Great Peter Street, SW1P 2EZ http://www.civitas.org.uk .
A good place for liberals to start their education on this topic.
Correction: the first sentence should read: ‘ . . the scale of pre-WW1 immigration . . ‘