Europe's
unnecessary crisis
over immigration and ageing
By
Jonathan
Power
August 20, 2003
LONDON - For many years we have been blinded by
news about immigration. Hardly a day goes by when we are
not told some provoking item - yesterday, black Africans
in a small boat taking in water in a wild sea trying to
reach Europe. And this past month we have been swamped by
stories about the slow down of population growth and the
ageing population of Europe, with often the corollary -
the argument that the Europe of the future cannot survive
without opening the immigration gates wide. But, as
Walter Lippmann once wrote, news and truth are not the
same thing.
Into this ill-informed, news-fed, maelstrom in Europe
has stepped all manner of bombastic opinion making- from
Jean-Marie Le Pen on the anti-immigrant right in France,
who gained 17% of the vote in the first round of the
presidential election last year, to the sophisticated
writer Oriani Fallaci who, in Italy's leading liberal
paper, Corriere Della Sera, wrote of seeing Somali
immigrants living in a tent, performing their bodily
functions next to Florence Cathedral, and asked in
seething prose, "why should we respect people who don't
respect us?"
Apparently, the situation is set to worsen. One
forecast made by the UN's chief of population statistics,
Joseph Chamie, predicts that if the present German low
birth rate continues and immigration is zero Germany's
population will fall by over half by the end of the
century. And if that happens who is going to pay for the
pensions of the present ageing workforce? The Financial
Times answered this question in a recent editorial:
"Europe must now prepare to open its doors."
But what does that mean? Should Europe bring in 170
million immigrants by mid century if it wishes to keep
its population aged 16 to 64 at today's level (which it
would have to if the German kind of arithmetic were
applied across Europe)?
To worsen the mix (and the emotions) the last couple
of weeks the serious press has been busy linking the
pension reform movement now finally gathering speed in
France, Germany and the UK with Europe's future as an
ageing power weakened economically, militarily and
culturally as it lets in sufficient immigrants to cause
more social and cultural turbulence but not enough to
compensate for its fast declining population and
concomitant economic decline.
But a trend we should know by now is not a final
statement. Sweden, the mother of not only the
sexual revolution but of the working mother and the
government funded crèche, after years of a
dramatically falling birthrate now exhibits signs of a
reverse. Italy, Germany and Spain are introducing
incentives that will encourage couples to have more
children. In the U.K. and France the decline in
population is happening rather more slowly and probably
could be easily reversed with the same kind of
encouraging policies that the Scandinavian governments
have fashioned. Among the wealthier members of the
middle-class across Europe larger families are already
more popular than a generation ago, suggesting that while
increased general prosperity may at first encourage a low
birth rate as young couples become consumer conscious,
sustainable wealth may work the other way. Besides,
rising divorce rates have introduced a relatively new
growing phenomenon- a still fertile woman giving birth to
a second family.
The pension debate is equally misleading. Every study
has shown that the simple expedient of the rising of the
retiring age - but by more than the handful of years that
is now being proposed in Germany and France- can knock
the bottom out of a large part of this problem. In an age
when people are living longer and healthier lives (a
French child today has a 50% chance of reaching 100) it
is quite ridiculous that people should renounce working
so early in life. It is wrong headed to assume these
older workers will not be able to contribute the energy
and vitality of younger people. In an economy where brain
power counts for more by the year there can be no
question that older people often have more knowledge and
thus more cleverness in a wide range of jobs. It is
simply a question of mental block. We will have to invent
new age categories to replace those that have tended in
the past to cling tenaciously to the stages of
reproductive (and sexual) life: marriage, parenthood and
grandparenthood (and, shortly after, death). These old
categories no longer hold good. We have much left to do
whilst our grandchildren grow up.
A final point: it is something of a red herring
to suggest that the U.S. with its tradition of liberal
immigration and therefore a more youthful population has
a better answer. A fairly recent study by the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences estimates that migrants make
an annual net contribution to the economy of $10 billion-
truly peanuts.
It is how the labor force - old or young - is used
that is the important thing.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
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link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
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"Like
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