Legal Commentary

Yesterday I posted about Japan's recent proposal to pay couples yearly bonuses for having children and I questioned whether such a plan could succeed without other substantial changes.  I mentioned job flexibility and gender equality as potential solutions but I recently became aware of another solution, immigration.

Heinrich Hock, of Mathmatica Policy Research and  Delia Furtado of the University of Connecticut have posted a very interesting article examining the effects of low skilled immigration on the fertility decisions of high skilled women born in the United States.  Hock and Furtado conclude that low skilled immigration makes household service providers, such as housekeepers, nannies and cooks financially feasible for middle and upper class American women and that this in turn increases fertility.

Intuitively this makes sense to me ( I never even considered hiring someone to clean my house until I had a baby) and it also may partially explain why the United States, which does not provide significant financial services for families and still suffers from gender inequalities in the workplace, is not experiencing the decrease in fertility present in other developed countries

If Hock and Furtado are correct, then  current immigration policy may have some very unexpected consequences.  Beefing up our borders may cause the emptying out of our nurseries.