Folks, Time magazine this past week had an article on the rising number of parents having only one child. The article was pointing out that the cost of rearing a child is growing rapidly and is now approaching $300,000 per child. This does not include the cost of college.
The Time article reminded me that I have wanted to do a column on family size and population growth for some time now. I have a question that I sometimes put on economics essay exams that goes something like this: “Is it time to stop having children and just import the people we need?”
And, even though we have had in-depth discussions in class concerning the steady drop of family size for nearly 40 years there are responses to the question like, “This is the stupidest question I have ever seen” and “This is a dumb question.” These statements probably come from students who skipped the class or spent class time texting. (I have actually observed students texting the person right next to them.)
The essay question is not a bad question because during most of the past 40 years, our death rate has exceeded our birth rate. I believe the main reason for this is the cost to raise a child, but there are other factors as well. We have more women entering the work force and more women giving birth who are single parents. Both of these factors also lead to lower numbers of children. Even though we have a dropping birth rate, we have by no means the lowest.
Japan, China, Italy and the whole European area have lower birth rates than do we. The U.S. actually has the highest population growth of all the industrialized countries. So, why do we have such a high population growth and at the same time have less than a replacement birth rate?
One reason is that we are living longer. This is about 30 percent of our population growth because it takes about three generations before our lower birth rates will affect population numbers. The main reason, however, is immigration and children born to immigrants. The number of children born to immigrants is close to 1 million per year at this time.
There is a definite incentive to cross our borders and give birth. Anyone born within the U.S. is a citizen whether their parents are citizens are or not. Add to that 1 million, another 2 million immigrants who come to our country both documented and undocumented each year, and our population growth can be understood.
When we look at our total population growth from the 1970s until present immigrants and their children have accounted for 60 to 70 percent of our population growth. To look at the numbers, if my math is correct, we now have in the area of 65 to 70 million foreign born and their children as part of our 300 million population.
It would seem that right now would be a good time to stabilize our population. At the very least, we should stop population growth until we can produce enough jobs to support the 12 to 15 million people looking for work. To accomplish this we need to put some teeth into our immigration laws. As the laws are at this time, the only penalty for foreign workers in our country, without the proper papers, is deportation. And deporting 15 million – the upper end estimates – undocumented people is next to impossible.
Our immigration laws are written in such a way that they mean nothing and solve nothing. Our super-large corporations, the ones that control our government, want cheap labor to unload the hundreds of containers arriving from communist China every day.
We don’t want to forget the meat processing plants that have worse working conditions today than they did in 1906, when Upton Sinclair wrote his book “The Jungle.”
The solution to our immigration problem is very simple. We need to make it illegal to hire undocumented people. And, the penalty for breaking this law must be stiff jail time for the personnel manager and the general manager doing the hiring.
There are two major ways to major ways to accomplish this goal. We can take to the streets by the millions, in protests, or we can demand that our legislative representatives pass this law or be recalled. Either course of action, or both, requires that you and I make it happen because if we don’t do something nothing will change.
The super-large corporations don’t care about us, and they don’t care about out country. Their goal is making money and they don’t care where their labor comes from as long as it is cheap.
So, once again here is the 13 two-letter, word sentence. “If it is to be, it is up to us to do it.”
Bill Horne is a professor at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The Highland County Press.
