The 41 nations more migrant than this 'nation of immigrants'

Since the phrase "nation of immigrants" was first used in reference to the United States 80 years ago, it's regularly been invoked by politicians, chambers of commerce, journalists, charities, and ethnic activist groups as the most vitally important aspect of our collective national character.

Here is a list of countries who put us to shame by outdoing America and its Dreamers by boasting higher shares of immigrants in their contemporary populations than we do: Andorra, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Monaco, Kuwait, Macau, Palestine, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Jordan, Nauru, Israel, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Brunei, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Switzerland, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Latvia, Canada, Gabon, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Gambia, Estonia, Belize, Palau, Austria, the Ukraine, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Norway, the Ivory Coast, and Moldova.

I wonder if Bryan Caplan is more troubled by how far down we are on this list or how far down we are in the PISA rankings, because going up in one means going down in the other. As the economist well knows, life is about trade offs, after all.

Professional journalism

On display in that oh-so venerable rag, the New York Times, in an article referenced recently by Steve Sailer. Excerpt worthy of special derision, my emphasis:

In a photograph taken not long after the assassination, my grandmother smiles a porcelain smile, poised and lovely in psychedelic purple Pucci, coiffure stacked high in what can only be described as a hairway to heaven.

Only? It can only be described using a cute phrase that doesn't even denote a specific hairstyle, but is instead used in local hair styling salons all across flyover country? There is no other way to describe it?

Where to be born vs. where people are being born

The Economist's "sister" company has made an earnest, contemporary attempt to determine which countries are the most and least propitious ones to be born into. Check out the list and notes on the methodology there.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that the best places to be born are doing the least birthing, while the worst places are doing more than their fair share of it. The correlation between a country's where-to-be-born index score and its total fertility rate is a statistically significant .49. A couple of tweaks could easily make that moderately robust relationship considerably stronger still.

Firstly, give sub-Saharan Africa more reasonable representation. Of the 80 countries included, only four--including the 'crown jewel', South Africa (#53)--make the cut. The other three--Angola, Kenya, and Nigeria--rank 76th, 79th, and 80th on the ranking of where it's best to be born, respectively. They rank 1st, 3rd, and 2nd when it comes to procreation, however.

Secondly, reduce Eastern Europe's and central Asia's representation. There are a lot of old Soviet countries included that tend to be, rather uniquely, both crappy places to be born and places where there isn't much birthing occurring. A lot of attention is given to the question of which countries will be the globe's prime movers in the 21st century, but a less frequently inquired about question (and one with a clearer set of answers) is which places will be bit players.

That said, as constructed an observable pattern still emerges:

At one remove, the list paints a dysgenic global picture. Of course, the right-thinking editors at the august magazine don't actually mention anything about fertility (the closest they come is a parenthetical "demography", devoid of any expounding), but Economist readers can surely read between the lines (with quantification to boot if they visit this our humble online outpost here!).

It has become unfashionable for the Establishment to push population reduction as a policy goal even with the ascent of green thinking because of the rather obvious implication that the hardest hit if such a goal was realized would be NAMs--especially immigrants--domestically and third-worlders internationally. Even when the subject is bandied about in the more politically incorrect parts of the media world, the racial and ethnic ramifications are often glossed over.

Recently, Randall Parker wondered how to best sell leftists on how to cut the demand for low-skilled labor and, by implication, thus reduce illegal immigration from south of the border. Similarly, how best to sell them on promoting eugenic birthing?

Egalitarianism seems like the most plausible avenue to pursue. A simple thought experiment demonstrates. In the real world scenario, Mr. and Mrs. Rich, worth $10 million, have one kid, while Ms. Poor, worth $10k, has five. Kid Richie gets $10 million passed on to him, while each of the Poories get $2k. He's worth 5,000 times more than they are. In the Ideal World, Mr. and Mrs. Rich have five kids while Ms. Poor has one. Each of the Richies get $2 million, while Poorie gets $10k. Now a Rich kid is only worth 200 times as much. Presto, a 25 fold reduction in the wealth gap!

Idiocracy is an old friend

Jayman has an interesting post showing that the positive correlation between fertility and political conservatism has existed in the US for nearly a century. Rifting off of this (okay, okay, copying it!), presented below are similar graphs tracing the relationship between fertility* and a couple of other angles I'm interested in--intelligence and educational attainment. To allow for family formation to have occurred, racial confounding to be avoided, and linguistic problems to be evaded, all included respondents were at least aged 35 at the time of their participation, non-whites are excluded, and the foreign-born are disregarded, respectively.

Firstly, fertility and intelligence by decade(s) of birth:

The dysgenic trend isn't anything new. We've putatively been moving towards Idiocracy for a century now. I use the qualifier because it is by no means clear that the average IQ of white Americans has declined in the last 100 years--to the contrary, it has probably increased.

Parenthetically, I find it neat to see the phrase "baby boomer" really come alive with the data.

And fertility and educational attainment by decade(s) of birth:

The correlation between education and fertility is much stronger than the correlation between intelligence and fertility is. The sixties cohorts illustrate this particularly well in the two graphs presented above. Of the 25 bars displayed in the latter graph, only two buck the otherwise perfect pattern of more education resulting in fewer children, and they are minor ("some college" among those born 1900-1919 and "bachelor's" among those born in the fifties). In the former graph showing the interaction between intelligence and fertility, there are several exceptions.

Here's to the education bubble bursting and a much more efficient, industrious method of imparting skills and knowledge to those rationally seeking them rising out of the dampness. The current structure isn't just financially wasteful and morally destructive--instilling in young adults a sense of entitlement to go along with a heavy debt burden and little in the way of marketable capabilities or competencies--it also plays a starring role in the death of the west.

* The averages are systematically overstated here as the GSS instructs survey participants to count not only their biological children but also step-children and those they've adopted.

GSS variables used: COHORT(1900-1919)(1920-1939)(1940-1949)(1950-1959)(1960-1969), WORDSUM(0-3)(4-5)(6)(7-8)(9-10), EDUC(0-11)(12)(13-15)(16-17)(18-20), BORN(1), RACE(1), CHILDS, YEAR(1985-2010)(1995-2010)(2005-2010)

Devon's doing less of it now, too

After this, I'm off the fecundity kick for awhile, promise. In the following graph, GSS respondents are broken up into five categories; Really Smarts (wordsum score of 9-10, comprising 13% of the population), Pretty Smarts (7-8, 26%), Normals (6, 22%), Pretty Dumbs (4-5, 27%), and Really Dumbs (0-3, 12%). The average number of children middle-aged adults in each category have are shown by year. To avoid English language fluency issues, only those born in the US are included:


No surprises. There is some expected year-to-year bouncing around due to randomness, but the societal patterns are clear: Those on the left side of the IQ spectrum have more children than those on the right side do, and everybody has been having fewer and fewer of them over the last four decades.

GSS variables used: WORDSUM(0-3)(4-5)(6)(7-8)(9-10), YEAR, BORN(1), AGE(36-62), CHILDS