Washington D.C
Rapid growth in the nation’s older population is likely to put huge pressure on the cost of government safety-net programs, even though the rise of immigrants is helping to increase the total of working-age people, a report from the Pew Hispanic Center said.
Most of the overall population growth, 82 percent, will be the result of immigrants arriving between 2005 and 2050, as well as their children and grandchildren.
Other findings include:
“Future immigration lessens the load on each worker, but it’s not a big effect. The dependency is going to increase regardless of what we do with immigration,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew Hispanic. “The reason this is going to happen is not what’s going on in the future. It’s what went on in the past. It’s because our parents had so many kids.”
The center’s future population growth numbers are higher than those of the United States Census, which calculated a population of 420 million in 2050. The researchers said that is because the Census projects lower immigration numbers.
— Associated Press
