From http://lifenews.com/nat4440.html
Researcher: Abortions Cost Economy $35 Trillion Since 1970 in Lost Productivity
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 13, 2008
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Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A researcher who has spent over a decade examining the economic impact of abortion finds that the approximately 50,5 million abortions in the U.S. since 1970 have cost the American economy $35 trillion. That comes in the form of lost productivity by having fewer workers contributing to society.
Those contributions also come in the form of taxpayers contributing to state, federal and local governments that would have had more funds to pay teachers, offer health care benefits or put more police on the streets.
The cost to the economy also includes the lost support for the social security system, which experts say still presents a host of challenges for the future and questions about whether younger Americans will receive anything from it.
Dennis Howard, the president of the pro-life group Movement for a Better America, has researched the economic impact of abortion since 1995.
“We found that the 50.5 million surgical abortions since 1970 have cost the U.S. an astonishing $35 trillion dollars," in lost Gross Domestic Product, he told LifeNews.com on Monday. “However, if you include all the babies lost to IUDs, RU-486, sterilization, and abortifacients, the number climbs to $70 trillion."
“Aggressive population control has exacted a huge price in future economic growth that can never be recovered,” he told LifeNews.com.
Howard indicates the estimates are based on GDP per capita per year times the cumulative number of abortions since 1970.
He said that is a more conservative approach than that used by government agencies, such as the EPA -- which employs an “estimated statistical life” as a benchmark for its cost/benefit analyses for new regulations.
A typical ESL averages about $7.8 million per human life and Howard says using that as a standard shows the cost for all abortions to date would be more than 11 times his estimate, or an excess of $390 trillion.
The question of the economic impact of abortion has come up before.
Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute said last year that “When you look at the projections that show our population aging rapidly over the next few decades, when you see our economy and government programs such as Social Security risking bankruptcy, you can see that the United States’ annual 0.9% population growth rate is not enough." http://www.lifenews.com/nat2662.html
Howard has been warning since 1997 that the US faced a major financial crisis based on ongoing demographic trends.
In 1997, he wrote: “I see little hope that we can avoid an eventual crash on Wall Street that will make the 1930’s looking like cashing in your cards after a bad game of Monopoly."
He cites the Soviet Union as an example of a nation that allowed unlimited abortions to wreck its economy.
“The main reason for their collapse was internal – 300 abortions for every 100 live birth," he said. "Right now, there are not enough younger women to reverse their population decline. They are expected to lose another 40 million people between now and 2050.”
Related web sites:
Movement for a Better America - http://www.movementforabetteramerica.org
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From http://lifenews.com/int956.html
More People, Not Fewer From Abortions, Would Ease The Economic Crisis
by Colin Mason and Steven Mosher
October 13, 2008
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LifeNews.com Note: Steven Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute, and the author of Population Control: Real Costs and Illusory Benefits. Colin Mason is the director of media production for PRI.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section, Lee E. Ohanian urges the U.S. to respond to the turmoil in the financial markets by opening the door to more immigrants.
"We should encourage the immigration of prime-age individuals," he writes. "Increasing immigration would increase the demand for housing and raise home prices. And note that the benefit would be immediate. Home prices -- and the value of subprime obligations -- would rise in anticipation of a higher population base. . . . these workers not only would purchase homes, but would generate higher living standards for all Americans."
Ohanian's view of the economic benefit of new immigrants is overly rosy. Many of the immigrants who arrive on our shores possess neither marketable skills nor good educations. Essentially penniless, they are not going to be homebuyers for many, many years.
Rather they are going to be looking for the kind of low-end jobs that are already in short supply in the current economic climate, while their children, who must be taught English, are taxing an educational system already facing straitened budgets.
Consider what is happening in New Zealand, where the country's immigration office has already hastily enacted policies to allow more immigrants into the country, ostensibly in order to help offset the current economic decline. The new policy has, predictably, come under heavy fire, according to an October piece in the New Zealand Herald.
Many New Zealanders correctly fear that the arrival of a new wave of immigrants will give rise to both short-term costs and long-term societal problems. New Zealand's head of immigration, Andrew Annakin, dismisses these concerns, instead arguing that the "ongoing attacks on New Zealand's immigration service will restrict the country's already ailing economy by discouraging would-be migrants from applying."
It sounds like he's taking matters a bit personally, if you ask us.
We applaud both Mr. Ohanian and Mr. Annakin for recognizing the value of people. Clearly population growth in both the U.S. and New Zealand would stimulate the economy, and encourage the recovery of the housing market. In both cases, however, it seems more reasonable to encourage greater fecundity among the existing population, rather than recklessly increase immigration during a financial crisis.
The problem is that childbearing has long since gone out of style with today's intelligentsia, and even the most level-headed of economists are often loath to discuss it. The result is a strange double-standard, where it is acceptable to discuss immigration as a response to the economic crisis, but not the encouragement of childbearing.
So we find Rick Green of the Hartford Courant announcing that the state "need(s) immigrants." He goes on to add that for Connecticut to "flourish" where we have good schools and people who pay taxes and businesses that actually make things "we need, above all else, more people willing to work."
He goes on to cite Peter Goia, an economist at the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, who agues: "We are dead without immigrants in this state. . . ."(T)he only growth we are going to get is from immigration. If the immigrants go negative, we are going to have a declining population."
But if population growth is good for the economy, why not admit that there are two ways to go about it? The first, obviously, is immigration. The second is an increase in the birth rate. The answer to a society that has voluntarily chosen infertility as a way of life is not to import people, it is to encourage fertility by giving generous tax credits to families who chose to bear and raise children.
Human reproduction produces valuable economic assets. Every baby comes equipped with a mind which, when educated, is capable of solving problems and learning valuable skills. And from the time of its arrival, it stimulates the economy, as parents go out and buy larger houses and larger cars to hold their burgeoning brood.
The current economic crisis was not caused by low birth rates, to be sure. But encouraging higher birth rates through the tax code could help us pull out of our current economic doldrums. Those who are going all out to try and stimulate the economy should not forget that the ultimate stimulus package to the family economy is the arrival of a little one.
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