We’re Already Bailing Out Mexico (NPG Footnote)

• B. Meredith Burke
• July 1, 1995
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Footnote) 
by B. Meredith Burke
July 1995

Like the NAFTA debate, that on the proposed $40 billion financial bailout of Mexico is silent on the demographic gulf separating the two countries. Yet the situation of a major industrialized country whose native-born population has replacement fertility or below sharing a long border with a higher-fertility country just emerging from third-world status is unique.

Demographically unschooled Americans are unaccustomed to factoring concerns about fertility and population growth rates into our international policy considerations. Even Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, persists in confusing a symptom —illegal immigrants seeking jobs — with its root cause: high population growth rates in the sending nations.

The sharp post-1980 surge in Mexican migration roughly coincided with the labor force entrance of the first few Mexican birth cohorts benefiting from the decreasing mortality rates beginning in the late 1950’s. The just-released 1992 Mexican Demographic Survey recorded 3.9 million Mexicans age 40-44; 5.8 million age 20-24; and 10.7 million age 10-14.

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