In that previous post about the Amish, I suggested that their high fertility is based not only in a preference for children, but in a preference for children above other pursuits. This preference is realized thanks to the unique Amish social mechanisms that enforce limitations or bans on those other pursuits.

You could think of this as a trade-off, a voluntary one considering that the Amish have the option to leave their community. But what if a community were forced to make this trade-off against its will?

Only dirty subversives would roam the streets this late at night

Argentina is well known as a country that has suffered numerous political crises throughout its history, including several military coups that often led to periods of military dictatorship.

The last such dictatorship began with the 1976 coup, and lasted until 1983. In Grok’s words:

The 1976-1983 Argentinian military dictatorship, known as the National Reorganization Process, was a period of state terrorism marked by the Dirty War, where up to 30,000 people were "disappeared" by the government in its fight against left-wing subversion.

The military regime not only repressed those it considered as its enemies, but also imposed harsh policies that impacted the entire population to facilitate this repression. And one of those policies was a national curfew:

A disruption in the citizens' routines was the coup of March 24, 1976. The curfew was in force until [October] 1983 and the government exercised a system of control and surveillance. The young people, due to their militancy, were the most targeted. Daily habits were changed, meetings that were usually held between friends were put aside, and precautions were taken not to go out at night.2

Setting aside questions of effectiveness, a curfew clearly restricts people's ability to socialize and enjoy leisure time in the company of adults. And indeed, that was its consequence.

Did this curfew affect fertility by making alternative activities to having children - spending time on other pursuits - unavailable or more expensive?

Here is a chart displaying Argentina's Total Fertility Rate (TFR) from 1950 to 2022:

While correlation does not imply causation, there is a noticeable increase in fertility during the years marked by the pink shaded area in the chart, which corresponds to the curfew period.

And this bump doesn’t show up on the fertility charts for neighboring South American countries, like Brazil:

Or Colombia:

Though Uruguay does seem to show a slight bump during the years following the 1973 coup, when it also experienced a curfew:

And in the case of Chile, only the last years of the curfew (1973-1987) imposed by its military dictatorship seem to coincide with a temporary halt in the long-term downward trend of fertility.

What if it’s not a curfew that prevents people from going out and patronizing the establishments where they can enjoy themselves and socialize, but the fact that those establishments are private businesses and, well, we can’t have private businesses anymore?

Only dirty reactionaries would patronize these decadent bourgeois establishments

To answer that question, we have to take a look at Cuba.

After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the new revolutionary government quickly began to expropriate private properties and assets. Initially targeting those associated with the ousted Batista regime, the focus soon expanded to include those considered as enemies of the new regime, such as Americans and large landowners. Eventually, by the mid-1960s, even small businesses were subject to expropriation.

Nightclubs and bars were closed and their closures would be justified via official accusations that they were epicenters of prostitution, homosexuality, and crime.3

These establishments were now deemed inappropriate for the new socialist citizens the regime was trying to produce:

Rest in peace - cabarets, bars and other venues

We must find new ways of entertainment. We must develop cultural activities, popular dances in appropriate venues and workers’ recreational centers. Through sports we must find wholesome forms of recreation. Bicycle riding, motor biking, camping, trips to the beach, excursions, museum visits, theater, parks, forests, botanical gardens, the zoo, the movies, etc.4

Even grabbing a beer at the corner bodega became impossible:

Suddenly it was sinful and forbidden to go to the corner bodega and drink a beer at the bar by the curb, where all the neighborhood guys used to shoot the breeze and the women would buy the family’s daily groceries5

Did these restrictions and closures affect fertility by making unavailable alternative activities to having and raising children?

The following chart shows Cuba's Crude Birth Rate (CBR) from 1950 to 2022:

At first sight the answer appears to be yes. Yet, an objection can be raised against this first impression. The objection is that the increase in fertility began a few years prior to the revolution's triumph in January 1959, rather than immediately afterwards.

A partial response to this objection is that Cuba experienced conditions similar to a curfew before the revolution's victory, as was reported by the New York Times:6

Troops escorting vehicles - Curfew set for buses

Soldiers are convoying trucks and automobiles in Oriente and Camaguey Provinces, according to a traveler who arrived here today. Busses are banned from the highways after 5 P.M.7

The situation, unsurprisingly, was akin to a state of war:

Dairy, vegetable, and meat products no longer flowed from the countryside to the city.  Prices of basic staples soared and many products disappeared altogether. Sabotage and the destruction of property led to a drop in sugar production. Shortages of gasoline and oil brought railroads, trucking, and sugar mills to a standstill. Telephone and telegraph service across the island was paralyzed. Bridges were out of service, and transportation between Havana and the three eastern provinces was all but destroyed. Manufacturers’ inventories began to pile up at plants…From November 1 to December 31, 1958, about 300 bombs exploded in the Havana metropolitan area.8

Again, correlation does not imply causation. But the cases I’ve reviewed seem to suggest that imposing restrictions on leisure and socializing activities in a country might increase its fertility rate.

I've illustrated this point with examples from Latin American countries, but similar situations are evident in other continents, where countries have experienced an increase in fertility rates under curfew conditions.

[UPDATE: Related to this last point, you might be interested in some of my other posts:
The fall of the Berlin wall and the fall in fertility
The American baby boom and what it reveals about fertility]

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Most people are familiar with the image of Argentina as a country of immigrants, and I agree that is an image based on real facts to a large extent. To quote Wikipedia:

Since its unification as a country, Argentine rulers intended the country to welcome immigration…. The majority of immigrants, since the 19th century, have come from Europe, mostly from Italy and Spain.… These trends made Argentina the country with the second-largest number of immigrants, with 6.6 million, second only to the United States with 27 million.

But this image might be an oversimplification that distorts the social and demographic reality of today’s Argentina, driving people to think that the economic decline of Argentina from that golden age where millions of Europeans arrived into the country attracted by some of the highest wages in the world to the middle income country that is 21st century Argentina, is a puzzle in search of some complex explanation.

I’ve already partially explained why this is not a puzzle in a previous post and, as I mentioned in that post, Argentina’s economic decline matches, with a delay, a large change in its immigration policy starting in the 1930’s. I now intend to explore the immigration policies and history of Argentina in more detail.

I wouldn’t say that Argentina’s policy became anti-immigration in 1930’s but it certainly stopped encouraging potential immigrants to choose Argentina as a destination like it had before. No more promotion in source countries, no more land schemes to establish agricultural colonies.

And every time an opportunity to recruit new immigrants came along, Argentine governments dutifully wasted that opportunity.

In 1939 the victory of the nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War compelled hundreds of thousands of Spaniards to take the path of exile, and the prospect of living in French refugee camps for months or years.

With the last big wave of Spanish migration to Latin America having ended so recently and the specter of a new war looming in Europe, it was no surprising that many Spaniard refugees saw Latin America as an appealing haven and that several Latin American countries reacted to this humanitarian crisis offering to take in thousands of those fleeing from Spain.

What might come as a surprise is just how few of the more than 400,000 refugees were ultimately welcomed into Latin America. Mexico, the country that welcomed the most Spanish refugees by far, received between 30,000 and 50,000, while Chile received a bit more than 3,500.

It’s difficult to find the number of migrants for each country, but the total seems to be much less than 100,000, and assuming the proportion of notable people among all refugees who migrated to each Latin American country is the same, Argentina probably received between 9,000 and 15,000 Spanish refugees in 1939 and the following years. That is no more than four percent of the total at the most. These were people coming from one of the two most important recent sources of immigration to Argentina, with a majority of them coming from the most industrialized regions of Spain (Madrid, Basque Country, Catalonia), and the Argentine government took pains to discourage them from coming to Argentina.

The Argentine authorities seemed reluctant to welcome those passengers that were supposed to continue their journey to other countries, forcing them to stay onboard the ship until their departure towards their final destination… the government was accused of ignoring its traditional policy and denying asylum to renowned Republican intellectuals. Under the pressure of public opinion the government was forced to allow those Spaniards who were in transit to disembark.

Later on, when millions of displaced persons were stuck in refugee camps in Europe after the Second World War Argentina took in a measly 30,000, even though the cost of passage was already funded by the UN’s International Refugee Organization.

Then in the years 1962-1964, when around a million Pieds-Noirs and Harkis were forcefully expelled from Algeria, Argentina made very little effort to welcome this uprooted people. The Pieds-Noirs were the descendants of French, Spanish, Italian and Maltese settlers who began arriving in Algeria around the 1850’s and 1860’s, and despite the similar origins to previous European immigrants and the support of the French state only a few hundred Pieds-Noirs succeeded in resettling to the South American country in large part due to a lack of Argentine support1:

The National Agrarian Council of Argentina, charged with this task at the beginning, is incapable of assuming it and hardly hides it. It was taken over in 1965 by the National Migration Directorate responsible for ensuring the implementation of the Franco-Argentine agreement. The French government, aware of the serious difficulties and lamentable failures of the first colonies, decided in 1965 to delegate to this Service a Permanent Technical Assistance Mission of the B.D.P.A. who has since ensured liaison between the settlers, the Argentine authorities and the French embassy.

And due to the narrow focus on sending only Pied-Noir farmers - no more than 10% of the total Pied-Noir population - who were supposed to develop marginal and uncultivated lands.

Errors, lack of foresight, misunderstanding and chicanery mark the history of the colony. We paid in dollars for the property at a time when the dollar was 150 pesos; today it is worth 350 [in 1968], but the price of agricultural products is far from having doubled and there are still four half-yearly payments, two of which are late, to be paid... in pesos!

Last chance?

The next big chance for starting a new wave of immigration, at least if we assume a preference for immigrants of European ancestry and culture, came in the 1990’s with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Suddenly any immigrant friendly country could have its pick of hard working foreigners from what is now the fastest growing country in Europe in the last three decades, from the highest per capita motor vehicle producing country in the world, or from any of the other 10 former communist countries that as of 2023 have a higher GDP per capita than Argentina.

What was the reaction of Argentina’s government to this opportunity?

I’ll quote Wikipedia:

In March 1993, Argentine Foreign Minister, Guido di Tella, while on an official visit to Hungary stated that Argentina was capable of receiving European immigrants. The next day, the Argentine Ambassador to Romania, published a request in the local media reporting on the initiative based on the statement from the Foreign Minister, and the following day 6,000 Romanians were stationed at the door of the Argentine embassy in Bucharest requesting applications for immigration to Argentina. Within a few days, the Argentine embassy received 17,000 applications for immigration, however, many applicants were not able to meet various requirements and had little money to settle in Argentina. When news reached Argentina, many took to the streets protesting the possible wave of Romanian migrants coming to Argentina and many feared that the migrants would occupy jobs that did not exist or for locals. In July 1993, Romanian President Ion Iliescu paid a visit to Argentina and met with President Carlos Menem to discuss possible Romanian immigration to Argentina. In the end, only a few hundred Romanians were granted visas to immigrate to Argentina.

This episode, confirmed by other sources, doesn’t just prove the lack of a policy for attracting highly skilled Eastern Europeans willing to go to Argentina. It also shows the changes in the social and political environment - politics in Argentina is to a large degree mob politics - with respect to immigrants. It’s now the case that potential immigrants from regions with a history of high economic development are not encouraged to migrate but looked at with distrust.

Also notice how in the former communist countries, after 45 years of economic mismanagement and migration restrictions, the name and reputation of Argentina was still so great in the 1990’s that it only took a small advertising effort for tens of thousands of potential immigrants to turn up in just a few days.

Argentina has received a not insignificant amount of migrants in the last few decades, close to one and a half million in total, but almost all of them have come from neighboring South American countries, mainly Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, countries that never experienced the golden age that Argentina experienced. You could say that Argentina has latin-americanized itself again in the last decades.

The myth of dilution

There’s a misconception of Argentina being flooded by immigrants, even more so than the US, to the point where the previous population was diluted into the new population. This idea is inspired by statements of “6.6 million immigrants” and the fact that Argentina’s population was around 1.9 million in 1869, before the great migration started, and had risen to around 8 million by 1914 when the great migration was ending. It only takes some back of the envelope calculation to conclude that the new migrants must have almost completely replaced, or “diluted”, the previous population - think of Australia.

But that is not the case. For starters it’s very difficult to know how many immigrants actually settled in Argentina because many arrived as temporary workers, going back to their home countries as soon as harvest was over or as soon as they had saved enough to now have a comfortable life back home. Permanent settlers - only some of them agricultural settlers because of how few agricultural colonies were established - were only a fraction of those 6 million.

Also, not all immigrants had an impact in Argentina’s current population by having children (and eventually grandchildren) in their new country. This is partly the result of a very skewed migrant population where males were over-represented compared to females. The next table shows the proportions of males and females in the total population for several countries in the Americas at the beginning of the 20th century, when they were receiving large immigration flows.

As you can see, Argentina had the most male-skewed population at the beginning of the 20th century due to the highly male-skewed immigration that it received2.

A back of the envelope calculation assuming half3 of Argentina’s population in 1914 were adults would result in a 28.6 to 21.4 male skew for adults, a 7.2% of the total population. Based on the fact that immigrants tended to congregate in certain areas, especially Buenos Aires, we could further assume that two thirds of those excess adult males where immigrants, suggesting that 4.8% of the total population were very lonely immigrant males, the kind that for the most part didn’t have children.

When pondering the effect of the great migration wave on Argentina’s present-day population, that gender bias should make you mentally replace the often quoted phrase 30% of Argentina’s population was foreign-born in 1914 by the similar but not quite the same 26% of Argentina’s population was foreign-born in 1914. A small but not insignificant correction4.

The fact that immigrants congregated so much in certain parts of the country - to the point of jeopardizing their marriage prospects - may seem strange, but remember that the motivation for settling in Argentina was first and foremost economic. As I mentioned in my previous post immigrants were attracted to the abundance of land and the high wages to be earned in the farming and cattle industries associated with that land wealth, but that wealth was not evenly distributed in the Argentinian territory. As can be seen in the following map, the provinces in red are the ones with lots of agricultural land and pastures, and also the ones most populated by immigrants in 19145.

Many male immigrants seem to have traded in the joys of a family and children for economic prosperity.

Another minor correction to the idea that Argentina’s pre-great migration population was swamped by the new immigrants is related to the preference of those migrants for settling in cities. The red provinces of the previous map are also the ones where the largest cities of Argentina are located, including Buenos Aires which was already home to 26% of the Argentine population in 19146. And as is the case in almost every country, fertility in Argentina’s urban areas is lower than fertility in rural areas.

This disparity in fertility rates is also attested by the fact that the rate of married women without children in Buenos Aires in 1914 was 14.8%, while the rate for all of Argentina was 10.5%, implying a lower fertility rate for Buenos Aires. And these provinces, the eight provinces in Northern Argentina with less than 9% immigrant population shown in the previous map, accounted for 13% of the total population of Argentina in 1869, before immigration started in earnest.

Assuming the Northern region of Argentina where few immigrants settled kept a higher rate of natural increase until today, it would mean those Northern Argentinians without an immigrant background will now represent more than the initial 13% of the total population, while those Argentinians with a high-immigrant background whose ancestors lived in Buenos Aires (province and city) and Santa Fe province7 in 1914, 56% of the population at the time, will now represent less than 56% of the total population.

And according to the latest Argentine censuses this is the case.

Doing a back of the envelope calculation8, that original Northern Argentina population (13% in 1914) would now be almost half the original population of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires region (the 56% in 1914). Assuming both populations remained distinct even after the migration of many Northern Argentinians to urban areas, and assuming the population of the rest of Argentina (which was 18% immigrant in 1914) had an average fertility during the next three generations, the descendants of the 30% immigrant population of 1914 would now be just 24% of the total population.

Again, this is a small but not insignificant correction. And you should mentally replace the phrase 30% of Argentina’s population was foreign-born in 1914 by the phrase 21% of Argentina’s population was foreign-born in 1914 in order to have a better idea of the impact of the great migration wave in today’s Argentina.

The idea that Argentina might become once again one of the richest countries in the world, like it was at the beginning of the 20th century, is mostly based on a misunderstanding of the reasons why Argentina was so economically successful back then.

One of those reasons was the enormous land wealth Argentina enjoyed at the time, a subject I explored in my previous post. Another is the great wave of immigration that transformed the population of Argentina into a much more urbanized and productive society.

But this second reason is an illusion. The transformation brought about by immigration was narrower, in a demographic and geographical sense, than what is commonly assumed and it has partially reverted in the last century due to the demographic causes I have mentioned above.

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In fact, you might read something like the following:

This country had the third highest GDP per capita in the world in the year 18951 while now it’s down to 32nd place in the world2. It was an export powerhouse with $77.3 of exports per capita in the year 1890 ($98.8 in 1912), one of the highest level of exports per capita in the world at the time3 while now it has plummeted to 36th place4 in exports per capita, causing widespread child poverty5 and the emigration of 24.2% of its most skilled workers6.

Except, the country I just described is not Argentina.

The country I just described is New Zealand.

And it might be a good idea to take a look at New Zealand in order to better understand what happened to Argentina’s economy in the last century. Maybe some common causes for Argentina’s and New Zealand’s decline can be found, and maybe that would help us to understand what can and cannot be done in the case of Argentina.

The same historical GDP figures which tell us that Argentina has been an utterly and complete economic failure in the last century tell us that New Zealand has also been an economic failure in the last century. These figures, the ones I’ll use throughout this post, come from the Maddison Project Database (2020 version) of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre in the University of Groningen, who continue the work of the late economic historian Angus Maddison.

The position of Argentina in the list of richest countries in the world during that golden age of the 1890s was eighth, while now it’s barely number 57. Here are the ten richest countries from that 1890s list with their per capita income in dollars.

1. United States: $7,146.33

2. United Kingdom: $7,037.33

3. New Zealand: $6,111.11

4. Australia: $6,102.78

5. Switzerland: $5,721.11

6. Belgium: $5,610.78

7. Netherlands: $5,254.44

8. Argentina: $4,779.11

9. Denmark: $4,380.00

10. Austria: $4,263.33

In order to have a good sense for how Argentina and New Zealand have done in the last 120 years compared to their 1890s peers I’ll use the average GDP per capita of the other six highest countries in that list (1st to 7th, excepting 3rd of course), and I’ll call those six countries the rich six. They are my control group.

The following chart shows the ratio of both Argentina’s and New Zealand’s GDP per capita compared to the rich six average GDP per capita for each 5-year period starting with 1896-1900 and ending with 2016-18 (there’s no data for 2019-20). NZ starts with a ratio of 1.0 for 1896-1900 while Argentina starts with a ratio of 0.78.

We can already discern a few things just by looking at that chart.

• Argentina is already a fair bit poorer than the rich six in the 1890s albeit very rich by world standards. This disparity is related to the significant variation in GDP per capita values during that period.

• Up until 1946-1950 (ratio of 0.75) Argentina does not show much decline compared with the rich six. The dip during 1936-45 can be partially attributed to the Second World War.

• New Zealand stays close to the rich six until 1961-65 with its decline being particularly pronounced during the 1960s, the 70s and 80s.

• Argentina’s decline takes place mostly during the four decades spanning from the 1950s to the 80s.

• The last two or three decades have been a very stable period for the incomes of Argentines and New Zealanders compared with the rich six, excepting the 2001 Argentinian crisis of course. New Zealand has stabilized around a ratio of 0.7 and Argentina around a ratio of 0.4.

One might also be tempted to conclude that since Argentina has gone from a ratio of 0.77 to 0.40, a 0.37 decline, and NZ has gone from 1.0 to 0.7, a 0.30 decline, their decreases in income are very similar. But equal declines in the ratio do not represent equally disastrous decreases in income. Think of a hypothetical country A that goes from a ratio of 0.11 to 0.01, a 0.1 decrease, and a country B that goes from 1.0 to 0.9, a similar 0.1 decrease. Country A would probably be in shambles while country B would just be a little less rich.

That being said, I don’t think anyone can say that the New Zealand of today is just a little less rich than the New Zealand of 1895. Unless it’s in the sense that everyone living in a middle income country today has a better standard of living than a medieval king, which is irrelevant to this discussion.

That caveat aside, the chart suggests that New Zealand's economic decline is comparable to Argentina's. I now intend to look at the possible causes of both declines and also attempt to explain why New Zealand has nevertheless done markedly better than Argentina.

As I mentioned previously, NZ had likely the highest level of exports per capita among farming exporting countries in the world during the 1890s, with Argentina not far behind at number six in 1890 and number four in 1912. They both exported wool, meat, dairy and wheat, the usual staples of farming exporting countries from temperate climates (see Australia, Uruguay).

The problem with being an economy dependent on farming exports is that the source of wealth, massive amounts of available cropland and pasture, is finite. And even though massive on per capita terms at the start, as time passes and the country’s population grows cropland and pasture per capita will diminish more and more.

This is related to the attribute of oil-exporting countries where a country with large oil exports and X population (think Algeria) is almost always much richer in per capita terms than a country with 10X population and the same level of oil exports (think Nigeria).

For the objects of our interest, Argentina and New Zealand, their populations have grown more than eleven times since the 1890s in the case of the former and almost eight times in the case of the latter.

This already sheds some light on why Argentina’s decline has been even more pronounced that New Zealand’s, since starting from the time when both were very land-rich Argentina’s population has grown a bit more.

Let’s take a look at both countries’ cropland and pasture hectares7 per capita from the year 1890 to 2010.

That chart makes it clear that per capita cropland and pastures have consistently gone down from the 1950s on in the case of NZ and from the 1960s on in the case of Argentina. Assuming the prices were stable in the long term during more than a century, the income per capita that both countries could get from their land wealth was bound to decrease.

Yet prices for their farming products were not stable during that period of time, in fact they decreased for the most part. That is the case for wool:

And for milk:

And for wheat:

Which means that Argentina and NZ were getting less and less money for each unit of exported farming products. Both seem to have milked their land wealth until there was not much left, the only difference being that Argentina milked its wealth dry (well, almost) much faster due to its population growing faster. This is also visible in a chart of the per capita exports (not just farming products but all exports) of Argentina compared to New Zealand8

The chart shows clearly that even in the 1890 to 1930 period Argentina only exported 30% to 60% in per capita terms of what NZ exported.

We can also notice a few other things in that chart:

• The post-World War II peak, immediately followed by a fall in exports almost as big as the fall of the Great Depression.

• The relative slow decline, compared to NZ (this is a ratio), during the 1960s, 1970s and 80s going from around 15% of the value for New Zealand to around 10%.

• The end of that slow decline around 1993, with exports increasing during the last three decades up to around 20% of the value for New Zealand. This coincides with the period of stability in Argentinian incomes, compared to the rich six, that I mentioned above.

This last point is particularly interesting because it seems to imply that for the last few decades the relative economic decline of Argentina, save for the 2011 crisis and the current one, has stopped.

The usual suspect

One of the most commonly mentioned causes for the economic decline of Argentina, at least out of the ones I’ve heard in casual conversation and read in some academic analyses, is the signing of the Roca-Runciman Treaty between Argentina and the United Kingdom in May 1933.

The story goes that driven by the economic hardship of the Great Depression and the large drop in Argentinian exports, of which the UK was taking up to 28% before 1929, the Argentinian government at the time decided that the only way out was to negotiate a series of concessions to British businesses in Argentina (meat-packing, railroads, etc…) in exchange for a guaranteed minimum level of beef exports. Was the Roca-Runciman treaty the best deal for Argentina, or at least a good enough deal, or was it an unequal treaty with very negative long-term consequences for the Argentinian economy? The denouncers of Roca-Runciman of course believe the latter.

Did Roca-Runciman allow Argentina to go back to its pre-Depression level of exports to the UK, or at least prevent a further decline?

The answer to the first question is no. Exports to the UK did not go back to their pre-Depression levels, but considering that the 390,000 metric tonnes of refrigerated beef stipulated in the Roca-Runciman treaty were equivalent to the 1932 beef exports from Argentina to the UK, we can assume that beef exports at least remained on the 1932 level.

As relates to total exports, Roca-Runciman doesn’t seem to have affected them. In fact Argentina did better in the years after Roca-Runciman compared to NZ.

This makes me very skeptic of the usual narrative blaming Roca-Runciman, at least to a large degree, for Argentina’s decline.

I intend to explore a few other usually mentioned causes of Argentina’s decline in a follow-up post to this one, but for now I want to wrap-up this essay by going back to the major cause, not of the decline of Argentina and New Zealand, but of their previous wealth.

The secret sauce

A few other countries did have as much cropland and pasture per head as New Zealand and Argentina did at the turn of the twentieth century. Some of them were just as wealthy, such as Australia and Canada, but others weren’t: Mongolia, Botswana, Bolivia, etc…. Hence there was more to their prosperity than just having lots of agricultural and grazing land, and that other factor which made possible such prosperity, according to most accounts and also according to my opinion, was massive skilled immigration.

This begs the question: what were the immigration policy and levels of immigration of New Zealand and Argentina once decline set in.

Both countries cut down on immigration during the Great Depression, with Argentina requiring a labor contract prior to arrival (or proof of means of support) starting in 1932, and New Zealand dropping government assistance for immigration in 1931 and shutting down its Department of Immigration in 1932.

After the Second World War, when both countries had the opportunity to welcome some of the millions of displaced persons stuck in refugee camps in Europe, New Zealand took 5,000 refugees in while Argentina only took around 30,000, almost half in per capita terms9.

From 1950 to 1990 neither country received many immigrants compared to the previous massive waves10, but the most dramatic change was the shift in the sources of those immigrants.

For Argentina this shift meant most new immigrants came from neighboring Latin American countries attracted by the comparatively higher wages, and for NZ it meant most new immigrants now came from Asia and the Pacific Islands.

To put it in terms of skilled vs unskilled immigration, Argentina shifted to a pattern of low unskilled immigration while New Zealand shifted to a pattern of higher skilled and unskilled (roughly half and half) immigration.

Fast forward to 2023 and more than 10% of New Zealand’s population is comprised of highly skilled Asians, while Argentina has not taken any measures to attract new highly skilled immigrants in the last few decades in order to re-create the labor pool that made it such a rich country a century ago.

Both countries still have large amounts of cropland and pasture per capita (among the world’s 10 highest for cropland) but in the modern world it’s difficult to be a rich country just by exploiting land wealth11, and having a highly skilled population is a requirement for any country trying to become (again) rich, or at least to close the income gap with rich countries.

I wish Milei all the luck in the world. He’ll need it to close the gap with New Zealand, and the better he does in the next four years the better Argentinians will do, but I don’t see any way for Argentina to become again the rich country that it once was. Not in the foreseeable future.

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