A Ponzi Problem: The U.S. Dependency Ratio, Social Security Solvency and the False Panacea of Immigration (2000)

In recent years, there has been much doomsaying about potentially falling population levels in the developed countries by people who are essentially ‘reverse-Malthusians’—that is, they predict societal disaster if population does not continue to rise. Without an influx of immigration, the argument goes, the aging of existing population will cause an imbalance in the relative size of the non-working population versus the working population, that is, the so-called dependency ratio. Dystopian visions of societies bankrupted by too many elders being supported by too few youngsters have been used to frighten people into accepting mass immigration as a necessary evil.

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