Last night a number of us attended a Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute. The speaker was Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard, and his subject was declining fertility rates in the United States and the parade of horribles that inevitably accompanies them. According to Last, our low birth rates were masked for many years by high rates of immigration. Since 2008, however, our battered economy has made the U.S. a far less attractive destination for prospective immigrants, meaning that we are falling short of population replacement levels, raising questions about long-term sustainability.
The lecture was fascinating on its own terms, but also because it underscored a number of points made by Eugene Bardach and/or Edward Tufte about how to do policy analysis: develop a "problem" that involves the co-variation of at least two variables; develop a good causal model that suggests possible "intervention points" (Bardach); make sure that your variables are measurable (Bardach); quantify if possible (Bardach); and ask yourself how big is too big, and how small is too small (Bardach), and "compared with what" (Tufte)--employing international comparisons where possible. Finally, Mr. Last emphasized the difficulty of projecting policy outcomes and provided a generous account of prospective critics and the grounds on which they might object to his pessimistic ("Negative Nancy") account of the problem. All in all, it was an exemplary study in policy analysis.
For a link to a video of Mr. Last's lecture, click here.
February 12, 2013 update: And here's a link to a piece casting doubt on the underpopulation doomsday scenario. Thank you, Trevor Brown.
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