How will babies named Jesus save the economy?
[...] The currency of the future is babies, because babies grow up to be taxpaying workers. Let's do Demography 101, which is basically the study of baby-making. Demographers have a fancy term called "total fertility rate," which measures the average number of babies a woman has over her childbearing years.
The magic number you need to remember is 2.1. This is the average number of babies a country needs to remain at equilibrium. It makes sense, too. When a mother and father die, they need to be replaced by two babies, or else the population declines. A rich powerful country needs lots of babies to project geopolitical power and increase its productivity. If you won't multiply, who will fight your wars? Who will pay Social Security to support grandpa? Who do you think will start the next Facebook, Amazon or Google?
The U.S. total fertility rate is at 2.09, and at that level we just replace our population. That's not good. But wait a minute, why do we keep growing? Simple: immigration.
Our favorable immigration policy and liberal treatment of the millions of people working without legal documents means our population will grow from 312 million today to 439 million in 2050. Hispanic babies, 83 million of them, will account for 65% of that growth. This is where the total fertility rate comes into play again, 2.84 for Hispanics, but only 1.84 and trending much lower for non-Hispanic whites who will only add 4 million babies to the melting pot. Keep in mind that those Hispanic babies born here to Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" candidates are all red-blooded American citizens -- our future Navy SEALs, entrepreneurs, middle-class working Americans and maybe even a president.
Demography will shape the geopolitics of the two largest economies of the 21st century: the United States and the European Union. They will maintain their status as world powers principally through immigration. [...]
And the demographics don't only apply to economics, but to politics and elections as well. The demographics of the electorate is changing. Any political party that wants to remain relevant needs to recognize that.
