The Migration Illusion: Why Moving People Won’t Save Aging Nations

Across the developed world, collapsing birth rates and aging populations have pushed governments toward a single, seemingly obvious solution: migration. Import younger workers, stabilize labor markets, and rescue pension systems. The logic sounds convincing. The math does not. The Migration Illusion explains why large-scale migration cannot solve demographic decline. Using demographic arithmetic, labor market realities, fiscal constraints, and long-term population dynamics, the book shows that the numbers required to stabilize aging societies exceed any realistic social, political, or institutional capacity. Migrants age, fertility converges downward, automation erodes labor demand, and each year requires larger inflows than the last. This is not a moral or cultural argument. It is a structural one. Migration can delay demographic stress, but it cannot reverse it. Societies relying on migration as their primary demographic strategy are postponing adaptation while compounding future pressures. The real challenge is learning how economies, institutions, and welfare systems function in a world with fewer people and older populations.