Allan Puur - Would Increased Immigration Solve Our Population Problems?
It is common knowledge that the Estonian population is decreasing and ageing. Lately, discussions on whether we should embrace immigration to solve these problems have emerged. Allan Puur, lead researcher at the Tallinn Universit Estonian Institute for Population Studies asks whether new people from abroad would solve our population and workforce issues.
It is common knowledge that the Estonian population is decreasing and ageing. Lately, discussions on whether we should embrace immigration to solve these problems have emerged. Allan Puur, lead researcher at the Tallinn Universit Estonian Institute for Population Studies asks whether new people from abroad would solve our population and workforce issues.
When it comes to ageing, the answer depends largely on our perspective of the future. As a short term solution, immigration can definitely help slow the ageing process. In the long term, it will not work, since the immigrants will age as well, and claim their old age pension. If we then try to solve this problem by receiving more young immigrants, we will fall into an unsustainable spiral.
We already saw this with the immigrants sent here during the Soviet period – their ageing turned Estonia into one of the most rapidly ageing countries in Europe in the 1990s. This is also shown in prognosis regarding the European countries that are currently accepting large groups of immigrants. If we look at the number of population, we should also decide whether we only look at the sum, or what it encompasses, for example regarding culture and language preferences.
The moral of this story is not to counter immigration, but to turn our attention to the fact that achieving sustainability needs a more multi-faceted approach than just counting on new people.
To achieve sustainability, we must provide our youth with the best education possible, which will increase the efficiency of our economy. Better efficiency, along with the aid from European strategies, would help us from this trap of average incomes. Increased efficiency would simultaneously increase our incomes, as well as the amount of taxes paid to sustain the ageing population, and also decrease the motives for economic emigration.
A strong family policy must also be a part of the solution – one that would help bring the numbers of births back up closer to that of deaths, thus slowing down the process of population decline. Third, coping with the changes in population presupposes increase in our heaths, which would enable longer periods of employment. Smart management of immigration can support these solutions, but cannot be used as a substitute.