The Kauffman foundation has produced the results of its latest survey of economics bloggers. Included in the survey was a question at the request of Bryan Caplan that I found quite interesting. The survey asked:
The net externality of the birth of an additional child in the United States is… [POSITIVE, ZERO, or NEGATIVE]
The results show that a majority of econo-bloggers believe the externalities to be positive:
This begs the question of the externalities of immigrants. After all, positive externalities for natives probably don’t start appearing until after high school or college, and before that they are on average consuming far more than they produce.
Since the average immigrant age is around 30, that means when they’ve arrived they are already past the stage when they just consume society’s resources, and have begun producing externalities. Doesn’t this suggest that positive externality of immigrants is even larger than that for natives? If you’re going to claim that the average lower education level of immigrants reduces their externalities, keep in mind that immigrants are also more likely to be small business owners and PhDs than natives.
It’s interesting that when immigration is discussed economists quickly jump to the debate about the impact on native wages. I doubt that the 72% of economists above believe that the average externality of people is smaller than 6% of the wages of highschool dropouts, which is around the lowest credible estimate in the literature, so why don’t economists accept that externalities of immigrants trump wage effects and quickly move to arguing for more immigration?
Modeled Behavior 
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Thursday ~ October 28th, 2010 at 9:28 am
RickRussellTX
Concern about “native wages” is pure jingoism (or worse), although I’m sure many proponents wouldn’t admit it.
Thursday ~ October 28th, 2010 at 10:39 am
ryan
Does consuming society’s resources count as an externality if it’s done directly through purchases? That looks like it’s mediated by the price mechanism. Or are you just talking about consumption of goods that themselves have net negative externalities?
Thursday ~ October 28th, 2010 at 11:38 am
Max
Isn’t it more likely that these economists are being gooey-eyed optimists about the positive externalities of an extra cute baby? With immigrants they are more able to be hard-nosed realists who believe that increasing population leads to increased competition for natural resources, lower real wages and a lower standard of living.
Thursday ~ October 28th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
DJAnyReason
Could it be that the average expected production of a child born in the United States, less resources consumed from birth to average age of immigration, is greater than the average expected production of an immigrant? That equation doesn’t seem implausible, and would make consistent positive externatilites of birth with negative externalities of immigration.
Thursday ~ October 28th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Lord
One has to consider how much of that earlier investment in immigrants is translatable to their new country, and how much is lacking in their new environment.
But while economists believe births are a net positive, as they probably are to themselves being in the upper quintile, isn’t that a question of potential parents having them, and if they don’t have them, doesn’t that say they are not in their opinion? And if natives choose not to have them, what right is it of economists to decide to use immigration to circumvent their behavior?