Conservatives and liberals alike generally assume that population growth drives economic growth............................. But until the triumph of the new laissez-faire economics in the 1970s and 1980s, most economists agreed that what mattered was not the size of a population but its human capital and its savings, investment and consumption practices.................. Indeed, many mainstream economists argued that a smaller but more productive population would enhance growth and lead to a more just society................ It is strange that we talk on one hand about an innovation- and knowledge-based economy while still thinking about economic growth in terms of sheer body count................. Moderate levels of immigration can help us maintain a highly skilled work force, but so, too, can investing more in educating our young......................Environmentalists need the courage to discuss national population growth(and the negative implications that come with ever increasing human population)............... They would be harkening back to a bipartisan tradition, one that cites not only air and water pollution but also quality of life: recreational access to open space and our duty to protect wilderness(and the animals that occupy that wilderness)

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

The False Alarm Over U.S. Fertility

By DEREK S. HOFF;newyorktimes.com

The Economics of Immigration

Will expanded immigration increase economic growth in the U.S. and reduce the federal budget deficit?

AS a bipartisan group of senators prepares to release its plan for comprehensive immigration reform, a curious argument is emerging from across the political spectrum: the United States needs immigration to make up for its declining birthrate.

"Over the next three decades, annual population growth for the working-age population will be less than a third of what it was over the last 60 years," President Obama's economic adviserAlan B. Krueger told the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in March. "Given current trends, nearly all of the growth of the nation's working-age population in the next 40 years will be accounted for by immigrants and their children."

Conservatives, including the anti-tax activist Grover G. Norquist, have embraced the argument. Last week, theAmerican Action Forum, led by the Republican budget expert Douglas Holtz-Eakin, found that immigration legislation could raise the annual rate of economic growthby nearly 1 percentage point, partly because it would help with "low U.S. birthrates."

In a new book on United States-Mexico relations, Shannon K. O'Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations writes: "Desperate to close the gaps in America's work force, in the next decade we may be urging Mexicans to come to the United States. In another new book, "What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster,"Jonathan V. Last of The Weekly Standard warns of a "population implosion" that will doom the economy to Japan-style stagnation.

These fears are hogwash.

Unlike many wealthy nations that will see their populations stabilize or decrease in coming decades, the United States, the world's third most populous country, is expected to grow — to to 420.3 million by 2060 from 315.7 million people today. Our fertility rate (1.9 births per woman, slightly below the "replacement rate" of 2.1) has dipped since the Great Recession but is still among the highest of rich countries' and ties or exceeds fertility rates in middle-income countries like Brazil, Iran, Thailand and Vietnam.

It was conservatives who largely invented the "aging crisis," during their 1970s ascendancy. Postwar prosperity had lifted life expectancy, and birthrates had fallen from their record highs during the baby boom, but conservatives exaggerated these trends to call for welfare state retrenchment: reductions in Social Security and Medicare benefits. Meanwhile, corporations backed the last successful immigration overhaul, in 1986, for the reasons they do now: their desire for a large supply of low-wage labor.

The proposed solution to the fabricated fertility crisis — more babies — helped bury the movement for "zero population growth" that environmental activists advocated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After Roe v. Wade (1973), support for a smaller, or at least constant, American (and global) population withered. Conservatives feared losing credibility on their staunch opposition to abortion, while liberals feared being branded anti-immigrant, particularly as Hispanics and Asian-Americans began voting heavily for Democratic candidates.

Conservatives and liberals alike generally assume that population growth drives economic growth. But until the triumph of the new laissez-faire economics in the 1970s and 1980s, most economists agreed that what mattered was not the size of a population but its human capital and its savings, investment and consumption practices. Indeed, many mainstream economists argued that a smaller but more productive population would enhance growth and lead to a more just society. It is strange that we talk on one hand about an innovation- and knowledge-based economy while still thinking about economic growth in terms of sheer body count. Moderate levels of immigration can help us maintain a highly skilled work force, but so, too, can investing more in educating our young.

Environmentalists need the courage to discuss national population growth. They would be harkening back to a bipartisan tradition, one that cites not only air and water pollution but also quality of life: recreational access to open space and our duty to protect wilderness.

Some 70 percent of Americans recognize that global warming is a serious problem, and nearly half agree that humans are the main cause. But debate has focused on the 11 million undocumented immigrants, not the environmental implications of sustained large-scale legal immigration to one of the world's most energy-hogging nations.

The Salt Lake City area, where I live part time, occasionally records air pollution worse than Beijing's, thanks to a fast-growing population and mountains that can trap stagnant air in the Salt Lake Valley. Residents are increasingly demanding better policies to reduce driving and cut emissions, but few mention our ever expanding national population.

There is a population crisis — not in America, but on a planet that is rapidly losing its ecological integrity and facing a new age of human-caused extinction. Neither the elderly nor the world's rising middle class, who rationally choose to have fewer children as their economies become less labor-intensive and as women gain more control over their bodies and reproductive choices, are to blame.

Politics and policy, not only demography, will ultimately shape the future of American society. Shoring up the welfare state on the backs of immigrants, including guest workers, is neither rational nor just. There are many reasons to re-examine America's immigration policies. But cynical calls for expanding our population at any cost should play no role in the debate.

Derek S. Hoff, an associate professor of history at Kansas State University, is the author of "The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in U.S. History."