Boomers' Good Life Tied To Better Life for Immigrants

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Boomers' Good Life Tied To Better Life for Immigrants
By MIRIAM JORDAN
May 7, 2007; Page A2

(snip)

With a major part of the nation's population entering its retirement years and birth rates falling domestically, the shortfall in the work force will be filled by immigrants and their offspring, experts say. How that group fares economically in the years ahead could have a big impact on everything from the kind of medical services baby boomers receive to the prices they can get for their homes.

(snip)

All told, the ratio of seniors to working-age residents, including immigrants, will grow from 250 seniors per 1,000 working-age people in 2010 to 411 per 1,000 in 2030, he calculates. This hefty burden will be hard for the economy to absorb, and will require some difficult choices. Those may include tax increases, benefit cuts for seniors, increases in the taxable income of working-age residents, as well as efforts to attract more immigrants to fill out the work force.

(snip)

One of the challenges is that Americans don't seem to be aware of the vital role the next generation will play. The predominantly white senior citizens and boomers, who account for the majority of the nation's decision makers, often vote against measures to boost services or raise taxes for schools increasingly populated by Hispanics. That's a problem, because better education is the ticket to prosperity for those on whose tax dollars boomers will rely.

(snip)

This maturing younger population will need to be ready for opportunities far beyond the fields, construction sites and nursing homes that employed many of their parents, Mr. Crouch says. They will also need to be "architects, business owners, doctors and scientists," he says. More broadly, the U.S. economy needs enough skilled workers to stay competitive. But current statistics bode ill for the future of the country's youth -- and the aging generation whose fate is tied to theirs. In Georgia, for example, minorities accounted for two-thirds of the population growth between 1990 and 2000. Between 2000 and 2005, they represented 80% of that growth. Yet, only 12% of black fourth-grade students and 17% of Hispanic fourth-graders are proficient in reading, compared with 38% of whites, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a public policy think tank. In California, already a majority minority state, 11% of African-American and 9% of Hispanic fourth-graders are proficient in reading, compared with 36% of their white peers.

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Prof. Myers's studies show a pattern of upward mobility into homeownership by immigrants and their children. By 2005, four of the top 10 surnames among home buyers nationwide were Spanish, up from only two in 2000. But young Latinos will become the largest market for the homes of white boomers as the latter seek to downsize or cash out in the near future. A less-advantaged younger generation is less likely to be able to afford to pay top dollar for retirees' homes. "We need to cultivate new home buyers; it requires moving more Latino kids through high school and college," says Prof. Myers. "It's not for the good of Latinos. It's for the good of the nation."


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117849490282093942.html (subscription)

[question everything]

1. There are many retirement communities

where retirees refuse to support school bonds, saying they've already paid for their kids when they were in school.

What they do not realize is that today's kids are tomorrow's lawyers and doctors..