One of the hallmarks of our time is insensitivity to long time scales. Politicians are expected to come up with immediate answers. Everything must be resolved immediately. Everything is also acute in that perception. This creates an enormous turnover rate in the recycling of opinions and criticism. In this gasp, everything is a crisis, even when it comes to issues that have an inherent slowness.
Because the long term and the need for careful consideration of different factors and interests are not mentioned, politicians have to bend over backwards to resolve disparate, apparently separate short-term issues. A good example of this is everything that has to do with population growth. Complaints are regularly heard that the Netherlands is overpopulated, that housing is permanently lacking, and that the space for nature and landscape is horribly threatened. On the other hand, shortages on the labor market are increasing and there is an urgent need to attract talent (at all levels, from senior secondary vocational education to graduate engineers). Place that next to the often lousy way in which beneficiaries and refugees are received and you suddenly see that connections must be identified and tackled.
Population politics is a fraught topic. Fertility is steadily declining in all rich countries, from South Korea to France. Women have fewer children than the replacement level of 2.1 children per family. Any attempt to encourage women to have more children through allowances, crèches or leave will fail. Having children is apparently unattractive if they are not directly necessary for the survival of the parents, as is the case in low-income countries.
Emancipated women, even in a traditional society such as Japan, prefer their freedom and thus childlessness or at most one child. Only countries where women have enough flexibility to combine job and upbringing, such as in Scandinavia, have a slightly higher fertility. Added to this trend are the losses from Covid-19, which mainly affected the aging part of the population, but nevertheless exacerbate the contraction. In Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere, recent losses of fertile young men from wars have been added.
In most of the OECD countries, the replacement of the aging workforce is urgent. Migration, in this longer-term perspective, is a natural solution to both the search for new talent and the economic hopelessness of the regions of origin. The Netherlands appears unable to turn thinking about migration into a positive issue. We continue to muddle through with temporary residence and work and study bans.
Migration also creates a brain drain, that’s the other side of the story. However, migrants often come from countries where civil wars, the breakdown of society and a total lack of economic opportunities offer de facto no chance to brains to use. Only the economic contribution of migrants to family in the country of origin offers some solace.
In the receiving countries with their aging populations, the concern for overpopulation predominates, especially when it comes to migrants who are culturally or ethnically different. Nevertheless, the redistribution of people from poor or unsafe areas to economically stronger areas seems inevitable in the long term. So to areas with functioning markets, greater population density and better protected nature. Because only rich countries can invest in nature conservation, at home and elsewhere.
Migration is timeless, it is the collective decline of the population that is the real crisis. Population growth through migration is necessary to ultimately provide prosperity for everyone. This requires a long-term vision, international and national regulation, public support and, above all, calm politicians.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 16, 2022