Immigration is Not a Solution to Low Fertility Rates, By James Reed and Brian Simpson

The notion that mass immigration is a straightforward solution to low fertility rates in Western countries has been a persistent talking point among policymakers. The logic seems simple: if native populations are not having enough children to sustain population levels, immigrants can fill the gap, staving off demographic decline, aging populations, and economic stagnation. Yet, as Professor Darel E. Paul argues in his compelling analysis for Compact magazine, the case of Czechia flips this narrative on its head, suggesting that mass immigration, far from being a cure, may actually accelerate fertility declines among native populations. This idea, rooted in both empirical data and cultural dynamics, challenges conventional pro-immigration dogma and invites a deeper look into the complex interplay between immigration and birth rates.

Czechia's demographic story is a rollercoaster that illustrates Paul's argument vividly. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the country faced a post-Communist demographic crisis, with its total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, plummeting by 40 percent to a "lowest-low" level below 1.3, well under the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population without migration. From 1995 to 2002, deaths outpaced births, and the population shrank annually. But then came a remarkable turnaround. Starting in 2006, Czechia's fertility rate began to recover, reaching 1.83 by 2021, surpassing even France, Europe's fertility poster child. This "Czech baby boom" was credited to robust family policies introduced in the early 2000s: increased state allowances, expanded child tax credits, flexible parental leave, and greater support for in vitro fertilisation (IVF). For 11 of the next 13 years, births exceeded deaths, signalling a demographic revival that seemed to defy the broader European trend of declining fertility.

Then, the boom unravelled. From 2022 to 2024, Czechia's birth rate collapsed by 25 percent, with the TFR dropping to 1.37, nearly erasing the gains of the previous decade. By 2024, natural population decline hit its highest level since World War II. Unlike the 1990s crash, which was tied to economic turmoil after the fall of Communism, this decline occurred against a backdrop of economic stability, with Czech real GDP growing 4 percent since 2021. So, what changed? Paul points to a massive influx of immigrants, particularly following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which triggered an unprecedented wave of migration across Central Europe. In 2022 alone, Czechia absorbed 350,000 immigrants, equivalent to 3.3 percent of its population, according to the Czech Statistical Office. The European Union reported that Czechia granted temporary protection to nearly 460,000 people, or 4.4 percent of its population, that year. Even as immigration slowed in 2023, net migration remained two to three times higher than pre-2022 levels. Czechia now hosts the highest proportion of Ukrainian refugees relative to its population in the EU, outpacing even Poland.

While it's tempting to attribute Czechia's fertility crash solely to immigration, Paul acknowledges that fertility is declining across the EU, and no single factor tells the whole story. However, Czechia's decline is unmatched in its speed and scale, only Estonia has seen a steeper relative drop since 2021. This raises the question: how does mass immigration suppress native fertility? Paul explores several hypotheses, starting with material factors like housing and income. One theory, supported by studies like those on the 1980 Mariel Boatlift in Miami, suggests that immigrant inflows drive up housing costs, which can depress fertility. The Boatlift saw a 7 percent increase in Miami's labour force in one year, causing an 8-11 percent spike in rents and a 14 percent fertility drop among renters over three years, while homeowners were unaffected. In Czechia, real estate prices did rise in 2022, but not significantly more than in prior years, and they actually fell in 2023. Plus, Czechia's high homeownership rate, above the EU average, should theoretically buffer fertility declines, as homeowners often see fertility boosts from housing wealth. Another material hypothesis involves wages: an immigrant surge can depress wages, especially for low-skill workers, making it harder for natives to afford families. Yet, Czechia's unemployment rate for 25- to 54-year-olds (the prime childbearing years) is the lowest in the EU and has even improved slightly since 2021, undermining this explanation.

Paul then pivots to a more nuanced, cultural explanation, which carries significant weight in his argument. The immigration surge coincided with a rise in right-wing populism in Czechia, exemplified by the ANO party, led by former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, which hit a record 35 percent support in early 2025. The even more restrictionist Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party has also gained traction. These parties tap into feelings of cultural dispossession, a preference for homogeneity, and fears of national decline, sentiments Babiš explicitly linked to fertility in 2021, arguing that "mass, unchecked illegal migration" exacerbates native fertility decline and that boosting indigenous birth rates is the only sustainable solution. But here's the twist: the cultural despair fuelling this populism is most prevalent among older generations, not the young, child-bearing cohort. Young Czechs, particularly women, are reacting by shifting leftward, embracing anti-natalist attitudes that clash with the pronatalist goals of populist movements. This political polarisation creates a feedback loop: immigration sparks right-wing populism among older voters, which pushes younger generations toward a progressive, often anti-family mindset, further depressing fertility.

This cultural-political dynamic is where Paul's argument shines, highlighting a paradox: the very immigration meant to "solve" low fertility may deepen the problem by fostering division and despair. Mass immigration indirectly hurts fertility by driving older voters rightward and young women leftward toward anti-natalism. As well, immigration's downward pressure on wages and upward push on housing costs makes young people feel too financially insecure to start families. These sentiments align with Paul's broader point: immigration, especially at high levels, disrupts social cohesion and economic stability in ways that discourage native reproduction.

Sceptics might argue that immigration's fertility-boosting potential, via higher immigrant birth rates, has been overstated. A 2025 report from the Center for Immigration Studies notes that while immigrants in the U.S. have a slightly higher TFR (2.18 vs. 1.76 for natives in 2017), their direct impact on national fertility is too small to reach replacement levels. Moreover, evidence suggests immigration indirectly depresses native fertility, particularly among the working class, through competition for resources like jobs and housing. Paul's analysis doesn't rely solely on Czechia's unique case; it's backed by broader patterns, like the fertility slumps in other high-immigration countries post-2021, such as Poland (down 18 percent) and Germany (down 7 percent).

The globalist counterargument is that immigration supposedly remains essential for economic vitality in aging societies. A 2022 IMF report argues that only net immigration can ensure population stability in low-fertility countries, preventing labour market disruptions and pension system collapse. Yet, Paul's data from Czechia suggests this fix is short-sighted. High immigration may stabilise population numbers temporarily, but risks long-term demographic decline by suppressing native births. The cultural and political fallout, rising populism, polarised youth, and eroded faith in the future, further complicates the picture. The idea that mass immigration can neatly solve the aging population problem in Western countries is a common refrain among policymakers, but it's increasingly being challenged, and for good reason. The critique that immigrants age too, even if they arrive younger than the native population's mean, cuts to the heart of why this solution falls short, a point backed by mainstream sources.

The case for immigration as a fix for aging populations rests on the assumption that younger immigrants, often in their 20s or 30s compared to a native mean age in the 40s, can bolster workforces and pension systems, offsetting the demographic weight of older natives. The cited 2022 IMF report champions this, arguing that net immigration is essential to stabilise populations in low-fertility countries, preventing labour shortages and fiscal collapse. But this overlooks a critical reality: immigrants age, and their demographic impact is temporary. A 2025 report from the Center for Immigration Studies points out that while immigrants in the U.S. have slightly higher fertility rates (2.18 vs. 1.76 for natives in 2017), these rates are still below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to sustain a population without migration. Over time, immigrants adopt the low-fertility patterns of their host countries, especially in high-cost, urbanised environments. The OECD's 2023 demographic outlook reinforces this, noting that immigration can improve dependency ratios (workers per retiree) in the short term but doesn't address the underlying issue of declining native birth rates. Eventually, aging immigrant populations strain the same pension and healthcare systems they were meant to support.

Czechia's recent experience, as Paul details, brings this into sharp focus. After a "baby boom" driven by pronatalist policies in the 2000s, which pushed the total fertility rate (TFR) to 1.83 by 2021, the country saw a dramatic 25% drop in births from 2022 to 2024, with the TFR falling to 1.37. This coincided with a massive influx of 350,000 immigrants in 2022, 3.3% of the population, mostly Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia's invasion. By March 2025, Czechia had the highest proportion of Ukrainian refugees relative to its population in the EU. Far from rejuvenating the population, this surge correlated with a fertility crash, driven not by economic depression (Czech GDP grew 4% since 2021) but by pressures like rising housing costs and cultural shifts. Studies, like those on the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, show how immigrant inflows can spike rents (8-11% in Miami) and depress fertility (by up to 14% among renters), though Czechia's high homeownership rate and stable wages complicate this explanation. More compelling is Paul's cultural argument: the immigration wave fuelled right-wing populism among older Czechs, with parties like ANO and SPD gaining traction, while young women of childbearing age shifted leftward, embracing anti-natalist views that clashed with pronatalist goals, further suppressing fertility.

In the end, Paul's essay challenges us to rethink the immigration-fertility nexus. Rather than importing the next generation, policymakers should focus on why natives have lost faith in family-building. Czechia's story shows that pronatalist policies can work, until external shocks like mass immigration disrupt the delicate balance. Addressing housing costs, wage stagnation, and cultural despair may do more to boost fertility than opening borders wider.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/mass-immigration-lowers-fertility/

"Policymakers and analysts across the West believe that immigration is the solution to the problem of low fertility. If natives won't produce enough of the next generation, the difference will simply have to be imported. This wisdom bursts forth every time immigration restriction rears its head. Low-fertility countries, it is said, require large levels of immigration to stave off population decline, rapid aging, and economic decrepitude.

But the recent experience of Czechia casts doubt on this common sense. Immigration, particularly at levels large enough to make a demographic difference, is not a solution to demographic decline but instead its accelerant.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Czechia experienced a typical post-Communist demographic crisis. Every year from 1995 to 2002 the country's population shrank. Between 1994 and 2005 deaths outnumbered births as the country's total fertility rate—a projection of the number of children the average woman alive today will have over her lifetime—collapsed by 40 percent. Czechia's fertility had always been above or near replacement in Communist times. Under democratic capitalism, however, it fell to levels that demographers call "lowest low" (under 1.3) for 11 years.

Then a remarkable demographic revival took place. Czechia's fertility emerged from lowest-low territory in 2006 and by 2021 had increased to 1.83, a rebound among the largest ever recorded. Not even Covid could stop it. In 2021 the country's fertility rate was higher than that of France, Europe's traditional fertility leader. After 12 years of natural population decrease following the end of communism, Czechia experienced more births than deaths in 11 of the next 13 years. The national media dubbed it a Czech baby boom. Observers credited the turnaround to an overhaul of family policy in the early 2000s. Parents received an increased state allowance, expanded the child tax credit, more flexible system of parental leave, and expanded state support for IVF treatments. The country became a model of success.

Then the baby boom collapsed. In 2022, the total number of births fell 9 percent, followed by a 10 percent fall in 2023 and another 7.5 percent decline in 2024. In just three years both births and fertility fell 25 percent, a collapse as large and rapid as the one experienced after the end of Communism. Czechia's total fertility rate last year was just 1.37, an almost total reversal of the country's fertility recovery. Natural population decline returned and in 2024 reached its highest annual level since World War II.

Unlike the fertility crash in the 1990s, the current one hasn't been caused by economic depression. In fact, Czech real GDP is up 4 percent since 2021, a respectable pace for Central Europe. It has instead been caused by mass immigration.

Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine led to a historic immigration surge throughout Central Europe, but nowhere was it as dramatic as in Czechia. According to the Czech Statistical Office, 350,000 immigrants entered the country in the first year of the war, a figure equal to an astounding 3.3 percent of the country's population at the time. According to European Union figures, the country granted nearly 460,000 people temporary protection in 2022, equal to an even more remarkable 4.4 percent of national population. Net migration remained at high levels in 2023. As of March 2025, Czechia had the largest number of Ukrainian refugees as a percentage of population of any country in the EU, more than 20 percent higher than second place Poland.

Of course, nearly every country in the European Union today has a declining fertility rate. It would be wrong to conclude that all of Czechia's fertility crash is due solely to mass immigration. Yet no country has had a larger absolute decline in fertility since 2021 than Czechia (and only Estonia has a larger relative decline), and none has experienced a fertility reversal as abrupt as Czechia's. Even as net immigration numbers have come off the boil of 2022, they remain two-to-three times higher than their pre-2022 levels. Fertility declines show no sign of stopping.

"In just three years both births and fertility fell 25 percent."

The causal connection between mass immigration and falling native fertility is somewhat mysterious. A common hypothesis points toward a housing effect. Some housing price increases have negative fertility effects, and a number of studies from the United States show that immigrant inflows drive up housing prices in the short-run. Research on the 1980 Mariel Boatlift showed that a 7 percent increase in the Miami labor force in one year caused an 8-11 percent real increase in rents that in turn caused a three-year fertility slump as steep as 14 percent among the city's renters. At the same time, Miami homeowners showed no fertility decline, and other research from the United States and Canada has shown that an increase in housing wealth among homeowners can actually increase fertility among this group. Czech real estate prices certainly rose in 2022, but no more steeply than in the period before the refugee influx, and they actually declined in 2023. Moreover Czechia has a homeownership level well above the EU average, which should temper rather than exacerbate fertility decline.

Another hypothesis emphasizes household income. An immigrant surge can drive down wages, especially at the lower end of the wage scale, making natives poorer and thus decreasing their fertility. Yet the unemployment rate for Czechs aged 25-54 (the mean age of Czech women at childbirth is now 30.4) is the lowest in the European Union and has even fallen slightly since 2021.

Materialist hypotheses are not the only ones we can entertain. Studies have shown significant fertility effects from all manner of ephemeral cultural and political events, whether elections or sporting matches or papal visits. Why wouldn't a mass immigration event provoke a fertility reaction far greater than an electoral or sporting defeat?

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support for the Czech right-populist party ANO has been on the rise, reaching an all-time high of 35 percent earlier this year. ANO's popularity has begun to flag in recent months only due to the challenge from Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), a party even farther out on the populist right. Both ANO and SPD hold restrictionist positions and win the support of right-wing populist voters motivated by feelings of cultural dispossession and powerlessness, a preference for homogeneity over heterogeneity, and fears over national decline. ANO leader and former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš explicitly has connected mass immigration, native fertility decline, and national despair, saying in 2021, "They know that mass, unchecked illegal migration is not the solution. Quite the contrary. The only truly sustainable solution against Europe's extinction is to increase the birth rate of our own, indigenous population."

The connection between cultural despair and fertility decline is not necessarily direct, however. Young Czechs of child-bearing age are not right-wing populist voters. Their parents and grandparents are. Those who despair over the demographic future of the nation turn out to be the ones least able to do anything about it. Their worries drive support for right-wing populism, which in turn provokes a left-wing backlash from the young that trends toward anti-natalism. This is especially true among young women, precisely the demographic that needs to buy into the populist fertility project for it to succeed.

In a period of low and declining fertility, many conclude that mass immigration is the only solution to population decline, societal aging, and welfare-state collapse. But simply on demographic grounds, mass immigration may be a cure worse than the disease. Rather than resign themselves to importing the next generation, policy-makers should ask why natives have lost so much faith in the future.