Commentary No. 32, Jan. 15, 2000
"Replacement Migration"
The Population Division of the United Nations has just invented a new concept of which we shall be hearing a lot more in the coming decades: replacement migration. In the last decade at least, there has been a very concerned discussion in all the wealthy countries of the world - the United States and Canada, western Europe, and Japan - about the fact that the age distribution curve of the populations of these countries has changed radically in the last fifty years, and that persons over 65 are now a significant proportion of the national populations and that furthermore the percentage is growing steadily.
This fact has given rise to a public policy issue of very great importance to these populations. Persons 65 and older are normally retired from the work force, and for the majority a major part of their income comes from pension programs, both governmental and private. The public policy issue is usually phrased as follows: With a larger percentage of persons drawing from these pension funds and a smaller percentage of persons contributing to them currently, these programs seem destined to go bankrupt in 20-30 years.
A number of solutions have been proposed. One is to start retirement at a later age. This idea is unpopular both with prospective retirees who do not wish to continue working longer and with young persons who are or would be unemployed as a result of the fact that persons would remain in their jobs for more years. Another solution is to reduce the amount paid out in pensions. This solution is also obviously unpopular with present and future retirees. A third solution is to have the employers pay higher sums into the funds. This solution is unpopular with the employers (including the states in their role as employers). So it has seemed that no solution commands enough political support anywhere to be adopted, and the systems slide towards bankruptcy.
Why does this problem exist? Two reasons, essentially. One is that, as a result of better medical care and nutrition in the wealthy countries, persons are living longer than previously. And secondly, the rate of reproduction of the population in these states has been declining rapidly and seriously in the last fifty years, such that no wealthy country today comes even near replacing its population with new births.
We live however in a world-economy that is highly polarized and getting more so. This means of course that the gap in income and living conditions between the wealthy and the poor countries is constantly growing. But so is the demographic gap. The poor countries have a far higher birth rate than the wealthy countries. These two facts are usually discussed as problems, problems for the poor countries. The world discourse on economic development is about how to raise the standard of living of the poor countries. And the world discourse on population control is about to limit the birth rates in the poor countries. For many persons, the solutions to these two problems are linked.
A second major policy issue that is much discussed in the wealthy countries is the considerable increase in numbers of persons who seek to migrate there from the poor countries. In every wealthy country, there are large numbers of fearful people who feel that migrants tend to reduce the standard of living and the quality of life in the wealthy countries, and therefore should be kept out. They are thought to reduce the standard of living because they are said to take jobs away from persons in these countries, since they are willing to work for lower wages than the current residents. They are thought to reduce the quality of life because they are said to be responsible for increased crime and drug consumption rates.
What has happened now is that the United Nations has discovered that not only are these migrants not primarily a negative influence on life in the wealthy countries but that they turn out surprisingly to be the somewhat magical solution for the problem of the prospective bankruptcy of the pension funds. It is all a function of maintaining the ratio of the working age population to the retired-age population. Migrants tend to be of working age (15-64 years). Such migrants can "replace" the persons not born in these countries because of low birthrates, and thereby raise the ratio.
The UN report gives some striking figures for Italy and Germany. They estimate that the working age population of Italy will go down from 1995 to 2050 from 39 to 22 million. They estimate that the working age population of Germany will go down from 56 to 43 million. And of course the retired-age population will be going up steadily. In order the maintain the current numbers of persons of working age, Italy must take in 350,000 persons a year and Germany 500,000. However, the number of retired-age persons is constantly growing. If these countries wished to maintain a ratio of four working-age persons to one retired person (considered the desirable ratio), Italy and Germany would need to import many many more: 2.2 million persons per year between 1995 and 2050 for Italy and 3.4 million for Germany.
So there it is. The wealthy countries must choose between allowing the standard of living of their retired-age persons (an ever-growing percentage of the whole) to go down considerably OR permitting what will probably seem at first an incredibly high number of annual migrants from the poor countries.
Conclusion: it is difficult to become wealthy, and it is not so easy to continue to hold on to your wealth. One has to make certain sacrifices, like living in the same city as migrants from poor countries.
Of course, this then opens the question, if the doors to migrants are flung wide open in order to save the pensions of the retirees in the wealthy countries, what are the political and social consequences of this - for the wealthy countries, for the poor countries, for the world-system as a whole?
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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