ALIPAC NOTE: Didn't taking care of your children, cooking, and working on your lawn and garden used to be things Americans both male and female enjoyed?

My wife loves Paula Dean and loves to cook. We both enjoy gardening and when we have children we want to spend as much time with them as possible.

Of course we will have less time for all that now that it takes more than two incomes to generate the real income once needed for home, health care, appliances, vehicles, and education.

Wages have not kept up with inflation for almost 35 years now. We have moved from a family wage to a living wage to wherever we are now.

William


Study Says Foreign Household Workers
Could Boost GDP by Allowing Women to Work

Household employment of foreign workers
such as nannies and house cleaners could
improve wages for native-born workers and
boost a country's gross domestic product,
according to a paper released Sept. 21 by
the Kennedy School's Center for
International Development at Harvard
University.


"When foreign workers perform services
previously done within households, such as
cooking, cleaning, and care for children,
the sick, and the elderly, they free up
native labor, particularly women's labor
that had been spent on household
production, for market production," the
paper said. It was authored by Harvard
economics professor Michael Kremer and
International Monetary Fund economist
Stanley Watt.


"Our calibration exercise suggests that
the admission of 7 percent of the labor
force as foreign private household workers
could potentially increase welfare among
natives by as much as a 1.2 percent
increase in GDP, the paper said.
"Moreover, this type of immigration could
increase the ratio of low-skilled to
high-skilled native wages by 3.9 percent."


The paper's conclusions are largely based
on data from Hong Kong and Singapore, both
dubbed "new rich" countries by the
researchers because of recent economic
development. Both countries have formal
visa programs for foreign household
workers. "Old rich" countries in Europe
and North America also rely on immigrant
labor for household duties, but those
immigrant workers are far more likely to
be undocumented, making their impact
difficult to quantify.


In the United States, the Migration Policy
Institute has used census data to
calculate that about 271,000 foreign-born
workers over the age of 16 were employed
in private household jobs in 2002, making
up about 1.4 percent of the total foreign
labor force at that time. Those figures
include aliens in the country illegally,
MPI said.


By contrast, about 415,000 native-born
workers in the United States had household
jobs in 2002, accounting for about 0.4
percent of the native-born workforce,
according to MPI.

Study Received Little Attention



Kremer and Watt first presented their
findings about household workers at a
Sept. 9 conference hosted by Harvard
University's Center for International
Development. Since that time, the study
has received little attention, apart from
a few postings on Web sites advocating
different policies on immigration.


"That's what we call the myth of everybody
owns their own slave," Americans for Legal
Immigration Political Action Committee
President William Gheen told BNA Oct. 12.
ALI-PAC, which solicits contributions from
individual members, advocates harsh
penalties for employers that hire
immigrant workers and is opposed to
proposals that would provide "amnesty" to
illegal aliens currently in the United
States.


A wire report about the household workers
study appeared Oct. 11 on the ALI-PAC's
Web log. "Translation: We rich people need
maids and nannies so we can go out and
make more money while our children are
raised by questionable people," wrote one
PAC member in response to the posting.

But National Immigration Forum
Communications Director Douglas Rivlin
told BNA Oct. 12 that the study
illustrates the contributions immigrants
make to the economy. "Caring for our
children or our parents, cleaning our
belongings and homes, feeding us, and any
number of other services make all of us
more productive in our particular
specialties," he said. "Many Americans
don't always know or appreciate how much
their everyday lives are touched by and
improved by the service sector and its
many immigrant workers."

'Leakage' Could Dampen Effect



The researchers point out that the
countries studied in their paper differ in
many respects from the United States and
European countries that do not have formal
visa programs for foreign household
workers, and those differences could
change how those workers impact a
country's overall economy.


Specifically, "leakage" by foreign
household workers into the broader labor
market could dampen their positive
economic effects, the paper cautioned.
Hong Kong, Singapore, and some smaller
countries in the Middle East have adopted
"very strong rules" to minimize leakage
among foreign household workers, it said.


For example, the paper said, Singapore
foreign domestic workers must sign
agreements stating that they will not
marry a Singaporean citizen or "engage in
any relationship with a citizen or
resident that will result in the birth of
any child."


"Leakage would likely be greater in
larger, more ethnically mixed societies,
with liberal attitudes on civil liberties
and without a national ID system," the
paper said.(Embedded image moved to file:
pic14771.gif)End of article graphic


By Fawn Johnson
Copyright © 2006, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.