Not necessarily. One possible response to the aging of America, not yet on the table: Expand the number of legal immigrants coming to America.
As I've noted before, the biggest reason Social Security and Medicare are projected to cost so much in future years is because America is aging so fast.
It's not just that so many boomers are planning to retire, and their bodies will wear out. It's also that seniors are living longer. And families are having fewer children.
Add it all up and the number of Americans who are working relative to the number who are retired keeps shrinking.
Forty years ago there were five workers for every retiree. Now there are just over three. By 2025, if present trends continue, there will be only two workers per retiree. There's no way just two workers will be able or willing to pay enough payroll taxes to keep benefits flowing to every retiree.
This is where immigration comes in. Most immigrants are young because the poor countries they come from are demographically the opposite of rich countries. Rather than aging populations, their populations are bursting with young people.
Yes, I know: There aren't enough jobs right now even for Americans who want and need them. But once the American economy recovers, there will be. Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.
Foreign-born workers are now 15 percent of the nation's workforce. At the present rate of immigration, between now and 2050, immigrants and their children are projected to account for nearly all the growth of the American population under the age of 65.
Immigration reform is already on the national agenda, but we've been focusing on only one aspect of it -- how to deal with undocumented workers.
We need to think more broadly, and connect the dots. One logical way to help deal with the crisis of funding Social Security and Medicare is to have more workers per retiree. And the simplest way to do that is to allow more immigrants into the United States.
Immigration reform and entitlement reform have a lot to do with one another.
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