How have Finland and Japan suffered/benefitted from lack of immigration?

[Tender Branson]

Canada's birth rate has fallen so much that deaths should soon be outnumbering births and the total population is predicted to be declining by 2030.

Interesting comments in the linked article suggest that a governmental attempt to increase fertility comes with two downsides. One is the political fallout of being seen as interfering in the bedroom. The other is the economic problem of trying to boost fertility during the bubble of seniors from the Baby Boom. That would add dependent children to dependent seniors during a period of minimal workforce.

Nope.

This article is from 2008.

The official numbers from Statistics Canada show a much different picture:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-215-x/2013002/t106-eng.htm

In 2006/07, the number of births in CAN was 361.000, in the year 2012/13 they stood at 384.000, an increase of 23.000 births.

The number of deaths went from 234.000 to 253.000, an increase of 19.000 - which means births actually increased by more than 2.000 vs. deaths over that period.

CAN also has massive immigration, which also benefits the birth rate - because these immigrants often come from Asian or African countries - where the birth rate is traditionally higher than in Canada (which in turn helps raise the Canadian birth rate).

(A similar phenomenon can also be seen in Vienna recently, where the birth rate was lowest among all Austrian states in the 70s, but because of immigration in the recent decades, it now has the highest birth rate among all states and a healthy birth surplus.)

In fact, CAN even has a higher immigration rate than the US right now: The population grew by 1.1% in 2013, with 0.4% coming from natural increase and 0.7% from immigration.

The US only grew 0.7%, with 0.4% coming from natural increase and just 0.3% from immigration.

[Tender Branson]

Canada's birth rate has fallen so much that deaths should soon be outnumbering births and the total population is predicted to be declining by 2030.

Interesting comments in the linked article suggest that a governmental attempt to increase fertility comes with two downsides. One is the political fallout of being seen as interfering in the bedroom. The other is the economic problem of trying to boost fertility during the bubble of seniors from the Baby Boom. That would add dependent children to dependent seniors during a period of minimal workforce.

Nope.

This article is from 2008.

The official numbers from Statistics Canada show a much different picture:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-215-x/2013002/t106-eng.htm

In 2006/07, the number of births in CAN was 361.000, in the year 2012/13 they stood at 384.000, an increase of 23.000 births.

The number of deaths went from 234.000 to 253.000, an increase of 19.000 - which means births actually increased by more than 2.000 vs. deaths over that period.

CAN also has massive immigration, which also benefits the birth rate - because these immigrants often come from Asian or African countries - where the birth rate is traditionally higher than in Canada (which in turn helps raise the Canadian birth rate).

(A similar phenomenon can also be seen in Vienna recently, where the birth rate was lowest among all Austrian states in the 70s, but because of immigration in the recent decades, it now has the highest birth rate among all states and a healthy birth surplus.)

In fact, CAN even has a higher immigration rate than the US right now: The population grew by 1.1% in 2013, with 0.4% coming from natural increase and 0.7% from immigration.

The US only grew 0.7%, with 0.4% coming from natural increase and just 0.3% from immigration.

I worried about the age of the link when I posted, so I checked the CIA Factbook. They list Canada's fertility rate for 2014 at 1.59 births/woman which ranks at 181 out of 224 countries. The 2014 estimate for the US is 2.01 births/woman which ranks at 123. The immigration rate may be large, but the fertility rate in Canada doesn't seem to show much of a bump from those immigrants.

Problem with the CIA factbook is that they are often wrong and not anywhere near the actual official figures from the countries' statistical offices ...

For example, the CIA factbook also shows a population stagnation for Austria (+0.01%), when in fact the population went up by 0.60% last year (or 50.000 people).

Also, birth and death rates are completely wrong. Basically A LOT there is wrong.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/au.html

[Tender Branson]

It's true that CAN has a slightly lower fertility rate than the US (1.65 vs. 1.88), but it's also true that CAN has a lower death rate than the US, which in the end evens out the natural increase in both countries.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_09.pdf

Again, the CIA-factbook is wrong: They say the fertility rate is over 2, when it's only 1.88