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Immigration and Economic Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

D. C. Corbett
D. C. Corbett*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

During the last two centuries economic and demographic changes have taken place with unprecedented speed. The population of the world, after several centuries of stability, has increased from 728 million in 1750, to 1,171 million in 1850, and then to 2,171 million in 1940, a phenomenal leap of 1 billion in ninety years. Meanwhile the European whites, the most prolific of the world's races in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were streaming overseas. From 1815 to the 1920's, some 55 million Europeans emigrated; about 19 million of them were from the British Isles. Some 36 million settled in the United States, over 4 million in Canada, 10 million in South America.

The outlines of the demographic phenomena associated with this expansion are well known; perhaps even better known are the revolutionary agricultural, scientific, industrial, and commercial changes of the same period. The succession of events need not be traced here; and of the actual increase in aggregate or per capita productivity of the industrialized nations no precise estimate can be made. The rise in the gross value of international trade from $3 billion in 1840 to $40 billion in 1913 is one indication of the expansion of economies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , August 1951 , pp. 360 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1951

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal, June 8, 1951.

References

1 Estimates from Borrie, W. D., Population Trends and Policies (Sydney, 1948), 2, Table II.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. The population of Europe, which constituted only 19.2 per cent of the world's population in 1750, had risen to 26.3 per cent by 1940 (ibid., Table II).

3 Heaton, H., An Economic History of Europe (New York, 1948), 630.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 623.

5 See Hansen, A. H., “Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth,” American Economic Review, 03, 1939 Google Scholar; Higgins, B., “The Theory of Increasing Underemployment,” Economic Journal, 06, 1950 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keirstead, B. S., Theory of Economic Change (Toronto, 1948)Google Scholar; Harrod, R. F., Toward a Dynamic Economics (London, 1948)Google Scholar; and Domar, E. D., “Capital Expansion, Rate of Growth, and Employment,” Econometrica, 04, 1946 Google Scholar, “Expansion and Employment,” American Economic Review, 03, 1947.Google Scholar See also the discussion in Higgins.

6 Higgins, B., “The Theory of Increasing Underemployment”; also “The Concept of Secular Stagnation,” American Economic Review, 03, 1950.Google Scholar

7 Isaac, J., The Economics of Migration (London, 1947).Google Scholar The studies cited are those of Jerome, H., Migration and the Business Cycle (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1926).Google Scholar

8 See Hurd, W. B., “Some Implications of Prospective Population Changes in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, V, no. 4, 11, 1939.Google Scholar

9 Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Education Statistics Branch, Analysis of the Stages in the Growth of Population in Canada (Ottawa, 1935).Google Scholar

10 Figures are from Keyfitz, N., “The Growth of Canadian Population,” Population Studies, IV, 06, 1950.Google Scholar This article contains a most careful presentation of the figures, with a full discussion of the accuracy and reliability of sources.

11 Timlin, M., Does Canada Need More People? (Toronto, 1951), in chap, IGoogle Scholar, contains a vigorous discussion and refutation of the “displacement theory” of Canadian immigration.

12 The latter points are discussed in “Some Notes on Canadian Immigration and Absorptive Capacity” by H. Lukin Robinson, Appendix В of Dr. Timlin's book.

13 Keirstead, , Theory of Economic Change, 109–10.Google Scholar

14 Keyfitz, , “Growth of Canadian Population,” 50.Google Scholar

15 Borrie, , Population Trends and Policies, 11.Google Scholar

16 Canada Year Book, 1950, Statistical Summary of the Progress of Canada.

17 Ibid., 1905, 81.

18 Ibid., 1913, 125.

19 Ibid., 1950, Statistical Summary of the Progress of Canada.

20 Ibid., 1913, 147.

21 Ibid., 1950, Statistical Summary of the Progress of Canada.

22 Mackintosh, W. A., Economic Problems of the Prairie Provinces, Canadian Frontiers of Settlement, ed. Mackintosh, W. A. and Joerg, W. L. G., IV (Toronto, 1935)Google Scholar; Britnell, G. E., The Wheat Economy (Toronto, 1939)Google Scholar; Bladen, V. W., Introduction to Political Economy (Toronto, 1941), chap. VCrossRefGoogle Scholar, “Wheat in the Canadian Economy”; Waines, W. J., Prairie Population Possibilities, a study prepared for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (Ottawa, 1939).Google Scholar

23 Bladen, Introduction to Political Economy.

24 Viner, J., Canada's Balance of International Indebtedness, 1900-1913 (Cambridge, Mass., 1922).Google Scholar

25 Canada Year Book, 1913, 147.Google Scholar

26 Smith, W. G., A Study in Canadian Immigration (Toronto, 1920), 67.Google Scholar

27 Census of Canada, 1921, IV, 2.Google Scholar Percentages have been calculated by the author.

28 Canada Year Book, 1950, Statistical Summary of the Progress of Canada.

29 Census of Canada, 1901 and 1911.

30 Ruddick, J. A., Drummond, W. M., English, R. E., Lattimer, J. E., and Innis, H. A. (ed.), The Dairy Industry in Canada (Toronto, 1937)Google Scholar; Currie, A. W., Canadian Economic Development (Toronto, 1942).Google Scholar

31 E.g., Mackintosh, W. A.. “Canada as an Area for Settlement” in Bowman, Isaiah, ed., Limits of Land Settlement (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; Waines, Prairie Population Possibilities.