The Political Economy Review 2016

decrease due to an increase in the amount of workers willing to provide this service (Galadan, 2015). Since everyone has to compete with the new immigrants for these jobs, the price of childcare services decreases. As a result, more women in the host country can go to work as they can hire someone to look after their children for them while they work. This benefits native households as there is less pressure to look after children allowing natives to go and work. This means native households have an opportunity to increase their disposable income. Lastly, due to increased standards of living, people in the UK are living for longer. This has resulted in an aging population and in the future the UK will have its largest population of over 65s in history. According to the Office for National Statistics, 1 in 3 babies born in 2013 are expected to live to their 100th birthday (21st Century Challenges, 2015). This will mean that the ratio between those of ages unable to work and those of ages to work will be much greater. Therefore the UK will have a higher dependency ratio, there will more people who need to depend on someone else (Pettinger, 2015). A benefit of immigration is that there will be lots of working age citizens immigrating into the UK. The inflow of working age immigrants would help reduce the dependency ratio. Immigrants bring many economic benefits to the countries that they go to. Besides the benefits for the economy, there are clear benefits for refugees. Refugees are escaping from constant fear and violence and they normally immigrate to countries like the UK or France which are multicultural and politically stable. They can have higher standards of living in the countries they immigrate to. Governments like the UK are very generous towards immigrants. People who are seeking asylum in the UK are given somewhere to live, such as a council flat or a hostel. In their own country, they may have not even had a roof over their head. Furthermore, they are also given a weekly allowance. For the UK in 2015, asylum seekers were given as least £36.95 a week to spend on essentials such as food (Sky News, 2015). In addition to housing and a weekly allowance, immigrants can also use the NHS and get free prescriptions. Not even domestic people over 18 are allowed free prescriptions. Due to the UK making education compulsory from 5 to 17, immigrants of in this age range can take advantage of an excellent, free education and may even receive free school meals. These are just some examples of the higher standard of living refugees can enjoy by immigrating to a developed country such as the UK. However, a large influx of immigrants can also have negative consequences for an economy. The increased supply of labour will particularly affect wages in the manual labour sector. This is because this sector requires skills which are not difficult to learn or hard to learn. Furthermore, these jobs have relatively low pay. An increase in the supply of labour in this industry will reduce wages in the short term as workers will have to compete for jobs and be willing to accept lower wages. This is inequitable as workers at the bottom end of the distribution of income will have reduced income. Income inequality is a long term issue most developed countries try to avoid, showing how immigration can create more stress for governments. Furthermore, the influx of immigrants will mean there will be less jobs available for the natives of the country. There will always be competition between immigrants and natives as immigrants are willing to accept lower wages. The issue of immigrants versus natives for jobs can be seen by the fact that out of 2.1 million jobs created between the end of 2010 and the end of 2015 in the UK, 1.1 million have been taken by workers not born in the UK. (Green, 2016). In addition, if an economy is in a recession, there will already be lots of excess demand for jobs and high unemployment. More people immigrating into a country means that there will be more excess demand for jobs. As more people come into a country, the government will most likely need to increase spending in the short term. This is because there will be more pressure on public services such as education and healthcare. Schools will need more resources for the extra children and healthcare systems will need more equipment and space

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