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Professor Rowthorn, a former consultant to the International Monetary Fund and the UN Trade and Development Commission, said in his report that there may be no economic gains from immigration at all.
If there are, they will be outweighed by extra costs imposed by the strain on housing, land, schools, hospitals, water supplies and transport.
He said in a landmark report for the Civitas think tank: ‘Unrestrained population growth would eventually have a negative impact on the standard of living through its environmental effects such as overcrowding, congestion and loss of amenity.
‘Such losses would ultimately outweigh the small gain in average wages apparently resulting from mass immigration.’
Professor Rowthorn said the major economic benefit that immigration can provide is increasing the number of younger people in the population, so that there are more working-age people to support the growing numbers of the elderly who rely on pensions and need more health and social care.
But he found that the difference to the ‘dependency ratio’ made by mass immigration is tiny compared to the major increases in population needed to sustain it.
‘If many of the immigrants fail to get jobs, or if they end up in low skill jobs or displace native workers, large-scale immigration will have a negative impact on GDP per capita and on government finances,’ he added.
‘The impact could be positive or negative but either way it is unlikely to be very large. The only thing that is certain is that immigration on the present scale, if it continues, will lead to much faster population growth and a much larger total GDP than would otherwise be the case, with consequent pressure on infrastructure and the environment.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-wing-economist-Cambridge.html#ixzz396NxvIdI
If there are, they will be outweighed by extra costs imposed by the strain on housing, land, schools, hospitals, water supplies and transport.
He said in a landmark report for the Civitas think tank: ‘Unrestrained population growth would eventually have a negative impact on the standard of living through its environmental effects such as overcrowding, congestion and loss of amenity.
‘Such losses would ultimately outweigh the small gain in average wages apparently resulting from mass immigration.’
Professor Rowthorn said the major economic benefit that immigration can provide is increasing the number of younger people in the population, so that there are more working-age people to support the growing numbers of the elderly who rely on pensions and need more health and social care.
But he found that the difference to the ‘dependency ratio’ made by mass immigration is tiny compared to the major increases in population needed to sustain it.
‘If many of the immigrants fail to get jobs, or if they end up in low skill jobs or displace native workers, large-scale immigration will have a negative impact on GDP per capita and on government finances,’ he added.
‘The impact could be positive or negative but either way it is unlikely to be very large. The only thing that is certain is that immigration on the present scale, if it continues, will lead to much faster population growth and a much larger total GDP than would otherwise be the case, with consequent pressure on infrastructure and the environment.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-wing-economist-Cambridge.html#ixzz396NxvIdI
