Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
  • “A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

AI Summary. Spain's immigrant and second-generation population totals at least 12m — roughly 25% of the total population — with nearly 40% of children under 5 either immigrants or born to immigrant parents.

Nicholas Eberstadt American Enterprise Institute
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Spain’s population of first and second generation immigrants from Latin America (~5.7mm), and Morocco or other African countries (~2.4mm), accounts for nearly one sixth of Spain’s population. There are ~37mm native Spaniards.

What happens when immigration reshapes a nation's demographic foundation?

Core argument: Spain's first- and second-generation immigrant population totals at least 12 million—roughly 24% of the country's 49 million people—making mass migration a defining structural feature of Spanish society.

Spain’s first and second-generation immigrant population comprises at least 12 million—almost 9.5 million immigrants and over 2.5 million of their descendants. [Spain’s population was ~49mm at the starts of 2025.] Over a third of Spain’s under 40 population are now first or second generation immigrants. And our numbers suggest that nearly two-fifths of Spain’s children under 5 are the children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves. Since our method misses second-generation immigrants not living with their parents, the absolute and relative size of Spain’s mass migration population is likely somewhat greater than we estimate.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Spain's first- and second-generation immigrant population totals at least 12 million—roughly 24% of the country's 49 million people—making mass migration a defining structural feature of Spanish society.
  2. Over one-third of Spain's under-40 population are first- or second-generation immigrants, concentrating demographic transformation most heavily in the cohorts that will drive workforce and electoral outcomes for decades.
  3. Nearly two-fifths of Spain's children under 5 are immigrants or children of immigrants, a share that understates the true figure because second-generation children living independently are excluded from the count.

Related Articles:

  • Quo Vadis, Hispania? Part One — Spain's population growth between 2000 and 2025 was almost entirely (98%) driven by immigration, as natural population increase (births minus deaths) was negligible; since deaths have exceeded births since 2015, all future population growth depends entirely on continued immigration.
  • Four Ways Europe’s Big Immigration Experiment Has Changed Spain — Spain's recent economic growth and job creation have been driven largely by immigration, with roughly 70% of new jobs since 2019 going to immigrants. This reliance reflects a fertility rate of just 1.1 births per woman — the lowest in the EU after Malta — and a domestic workforce increasingly
  • Depopulation Globally and in the Asia-Pacific: The Shape of Things to Come — Nicholas Eberstadt warns that depopulation will stress families as smaller families “become ever less able to bear weight—even as the demands that might…

AI Summary. Spain's population growth between 2000 and 2025 was almost entirely (98%) driven by immigration, as natural population increase (births minus deaths) was negligible; since deaths have exceeded births since 2015, all future population growth depends entirely on continued immigration.

Nicholas Eberstadt American Enterprise Institute
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Btw 2000 and 2025, ~98% of Spain’s population growth was due to immigration. In 2024, about one-third of babies born in Spain had a foreign-born mother.

Does Spain's future population depend entirely on immigration?

Core argument: Spain’s natural population balance turned negative in 2015, making immigration the sole driver of any future population growth.

Without immigration, Spain’s population would have stagnated in the first quarter of the 21st century. According to official Spanish data, births exceeded deaths by barely 200,000 for the 2000-2025 period (2025 numbers still provisional)—or less than one half of 1% of Spain’s 2000 population. Thanks to its robust immigration inflows, however, Spain registered more population growth than any other EU country between 2000 and 2025. Virtually all (98%) of Spain’s population growth was due to immigration during those years. And since deaths have exceeded births in Spain since 2015, any future growth would have to come entirely from additional immigration.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Spain’s natural population balance turned negative in 2015, making immigration the sole driver of any future population growth.
  2. without continued inflows, Spain’s population will shrink.

Related Articles:

  • European Stagnation Is Real — Six large American technology companies are worth more than all European stock markets combined, and the wealth they generate flows primarily to American households through equity ownership and high wages rather than to European workers or investors.
  • Four Ways Europe’s Big Immigration Experiment Has Changed Spain — Spain's recent economic growth and job creation have been driven largely by immigration, with roughly 70% of new jobs since 2019 going to immigrants. This reliance reflects a fertility rate of just 1.1 births per woman — the lowest in the EU after Malta — and a domestic workforce increasingly
  • Depopulation Globally and in the Asia-Pacific: The Shape of Things to Come — Nicholas Eberstadt warns that depopulation will stress families as smaller families “become ever less able to bear weight—even as the demands that might…

AI Summary. Intermarriage across racial and ethnic lines is rising across all major demographic groups in the United States, producing a growing share of the population that does not fit neatly into any single government-defined racial or ethnic category.

Justin Fox Bloomberg
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Less than half of Americans < 29 years old are non-Hispanic whites. As of 2020, 33.8mm Americans – 10.2% of the population – identify as being of two or more races, largely driven by intermarriage between whites and either Hispanics or Asian Americans.

Is the traditional racial classification system becoming obsolete?

Core argument: Post-1960s immigration from Asia and Latin America is the primary driver of rising U.S. demographic diversity and the declining non-Hispanic White population share.

The increase in immigration from Asia and Latin America since the 1960s has been the chief driver of the rise in diversity and decline in the non-Hispanic White share of the population. But those immigrants have been doing what generations of immigrants before them did and, well, becoming Americans. Marriages across racial and ethnic lines are much more prevalent among Hispanic and Asian Americans than Black or non-Hispanic White Americans, while intermarriage rates have been rising steadily for the latter two groups, too. As a result, a growing share of Americans just isn’t going to fit neatly into any single racial or ethnic category that the US government can come up with.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Post-1960s immigration from Asia and Latin America is the primary driver of rising U.S. demographic diversity and the declining non-Hispanic White population share.
  2. Intermarriage rates among Hispanic and Asian Americans exceed those of Black and non-Hispanic White Americans, expanding a multiracial population that no single government racial category can accurately capture.

Related Articles:

AI Summary. A surge in labor force entrants during the 1970s created a persistent worker glut that suppressed wages and hiring demand for decades, as the oversupply remained embedded in the workforce until retirement rather than dissipating at entry.

Steven Ruggles Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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Accounting for both inflows and the overhang of previous labor market entrants, Ruggles predicts a labor shortage such that “Americans born in the 2020s might be the first cohort in a half century that earns significantly more than their parents did.”

Does a one-time labor surge create permanent wage pressure?

Core argument: Baby-boom labor-force entry during 1960–1980 suppressed young-worker wages, which declined sharply after peaking in 1973, reducing economic opportunity for new.

Figure 3A highlights the influx of workers that occurred between 1960 and 1980, as the large baby-boom cohort entered the labor force, female labor-force participation expanded, and immigration rose [see Figure 2 for a detailed breakdown]. It was difficult for the economy to absorb all the new workers, and wages for young people declined sharply after peaking in 1973. Figure 3A does not, however, provide a valid measure of labor-market competition because the baby boomers and newly employed women and immigrants did not suddenly vanish after they entered the labor force; they kept working and occupying jobs until they eventually retired decades later. The glut of workers entering the labor force in the 1970s would continue to stifle demand for new workers until their eventual exit from the labor force, a process that is still in progress. The index of employment competition shown in Figure 3B is [a better] measure of relative cohort size than 3A. It represents the cumulative net labor-market entries over the previous five decades as a % of the working-age population in the current decade. As shown in Figure 1C, we are already seeing signs of an uptick in the wages of young workers, and as the demographic shortage accelerates we may finally see real wages of the young exceed the levels of the early 1970s.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Baby-boom labor-force entry during 1960–1980 suppressed young-worker wages, which declined sharply after peaking in 1973, reducing economic opportunity for new.
  2. Cumulative labor-market entries over five decades as a % of working-age population drives employment competition that persists decades after initial.
  3. Female labor-force participation expansion and immigration during 1960–1980 created a sustained worker glut that stifled demand for new employment until.

Related Articles:

  • Baby Busts and Growth Booms: Demographic Change and the Macroeconomy — Cross-country evidence from 1950 to 2020 shows that a 1pp lower birth rate is associated with 22 log points (~25%) higher GDP per worker 40 years later and 29…
  • Technology and the Baby Bust Paradox — Aging societies face structural labor shortages that create permanent incentives to automate, making demographics a long-run driver of AI deployment. Technology-producing economies benefit twice: by offsetting domestic labor scarcity and by exporting automation solutions to every other aging society.
  • Can A Depopulating America Still Flourish? — Eberstadt finds as of the summer of 2025 ~7mm American men 25–54 were not in the labor force. Despite record high prime age female LFP, ~3.5mm prime age women…

AI Summary. European immigrants who arrived with nearly no wealth converged to similar wealth levels as earlier European settlers within a few generations, while Black, Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican households remained substantially behind, indicating that initial wealth gaps do not uniformly predict long-run inequality across all groups.

Brian Marein Wake Forest University
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Except possibly at the very top of the distribution which SIPP cannot measure, the wealth of “new” Southern and Eastern European immigrants to the US has fully caught up with “old” immigrants. Wealth converges quickly once earnings inequality vanishes.

Does initial wealth explain persistent inequality across immigrant groups?

Core argument: By 1920, 50% of white adults were foreign-born or had foreign-born parents, yet Southern and Eastern European descendants achieved wealth.

Inferring the determinants of long-run inequality from group-level data is complicated by the arrival of 30 million Europeans during the Age of Mass Migration (roughly 1850 to 1924), who are by construction included in average white wealth despite having no direct claim to the wealth accumulated by earlier Americans. By1920, nearly half of white adults were either foreign-born or had foreign-born parents. Using the United States Immigration Commission Reports (commonly known as the Dillingham Commission Reports), I document that immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century arrived with almost no wealth. [Thus] a large share of the white population started from a substantial wealth disadvantage. Northwestern Europeans comprised the overwhelming majority of earlier immigrants, dating back to the initial European settlement of North America, while Southern and Eastern Europeans predominated at the turn of the twentieth century. If initial wealth disadvantages persisted across generations, one would expect households of Southern or Eastern European ancestry to possess less wealth than those of Northwestern European ancestry, since their families arrived later and started with substantially fewer resources. In fact, they do not. On average, they are wealthier.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. By 1920, 50% of white adults were foreign-born or had foreign-born parents, yet Southern and Eastern European descendants achieved wealth.
  2. European immigrants arrived at the turn of the twentieth century with nearly zero wealth, yet their descendants’ wealth distributions converged.
  3. White ancestry groups exhibit nearly identical wealth distributions by 1980–1990 despite staggered arrival times spanning 270+ years, while Black, Cuban.

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AI Summary. Swiss voters rejected a proposal to cap the national population at 10mn, preserving free movement of people with the EU and maintaining access to foreign labour critical to economic growth amid demographic pressures.

Mercedes Ruehl Financial Times
Date Posted:

Swiss voters rejected by 54–46% a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10mm. The proposal would have required the government to take measures to curb population growth once its level hits 9.5mm. The Swiss population is ~ 9.1mm today.

Does limiting immigration threaten economic growth when populations age?

The proposal, backed by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), would have made Switzerland the first country to impose a formal cap on its population. It sought to limit the number of residents to 10mn, from about 9.1mn today, and would have required the government to take measures to curb population growth once the population reached 9.5mn. If the population subsequently exceeded 10mn, the government would have been obliged to adopt more far-reaching measures, potentially including ending free movement of people with the EU, a cornerstone of Switzerland’s bilateral relationship with the bloc. The result represents a victory for the Swiss government, business groups and trade unions, which had argued the initiative threatened economic growth and risked undermining Switzerland’s access to foreign labour at a time of acute demographic pressures.

Related Articles:

AI Summary. The share of Chinese graduates returning home after studying abroad has more than doubled since 2018, driven by China's expanding role in cutting-edge industries, government incentives, and a less welcoming environment for Chinese professionals in the U.S.

Hannah Miao and Jon Emont Wall Street Journal
Date Posted:

~80% of Chinese nationals who earned a doctorate from a US school btw July 2023 and June 2024 wanted to stay in the US. However, according to Chinese recruiter Zhaopin, the number of Chinese nationals seeking to return home grew 12% y/y in 2025.

Is China winning back its diaspora tech talent?

Core argument: Chinese tech talent returning home surged 12% in 2025 vs. 2024, more than doubling since 2018, as government subsidies and.

There’s a longstanding name within China for those going back home—“sea turtles,” a pun on the Mandarin term for overseas returnees, haigui, that also evokes female sea turtles’ instinct to return to their natal beach after years of migrating around the world’s oceans. But the trend as it relates to top tech talent today has implications for American economic competitiveness, both now and in the future. The number of recent Chinese graduates returning home to seek jobs grew 12% in 2025 from the previous year, and the figure has more than doubled since 2018, according to a report by Chinese recruiting platform Zhaopin.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Chinese tech talent returning home surged 12% in 2025 vs. 2024, more than doubling since 2018, as government subsidies and.
  2. China's shift from technology copycat to cutting-edge innovator hub leads returnees to prioritize professional freedom and leadership opportunities over U.S.

Related Articles:

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  • China Lures Home Its Top AI Talent From Silicon Valley — China is attracting a significant wave of elite artificial intelligence researchers back from the United States, with recruitment of US-based researchers rising from a handful to more than 30 in a single year.
  • Litigation Nation, Engineering Empire — Jonathon Sine argues China “is moving beyond its breakneck industrial prime, facing similar dilemmas to those America confronted in the 1960s and 70s.” The…

AI Summary. Spain's recent economic growth and job creation have been driven largely by immigration, with roughly 70% of new jobs since 2019 going to immigrants. This reliance reflects a fertility rate of just 1.1 births per woman — the lowest in the EU after Malta — and a domestic workforce increasingly

Barney Jopson, Alan Smith and Irene de la Torre Arenas Financial Times
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Spain’s foreign-born population grew from ~5% to ~20% in less than 25 years. Since 2020, ~25% of the 1.1mm new jobs created in the EU were Spanish, and ~70% were filled by immigrants. At 1.1 births/woman, Spain has the second-lowest birth rate in the EU.

How Has Immigration Driven Economic Growth in Spain?

Core argument: Four Ways Europe’s Big Immigration Experiment Has Changed Spain.

Over the past two years, Spain has been the world’s fastest-growing large advanced economy and an engine of EU job creation. Since 2020, it has been responsible for one in four of the 11.1mn new jobs added across the bloc, according to FT analysis. Roughly 70% of those have gone to immigrants, according to Funcas, a think-tank, which has examined the period since 2019. Spain’s unemployment rate remained the second highest in the EU at 10.3% in March. Juan Félix Huarte, chair of Uriel Investments, whose businesses range from waste management to renewables, says immigrants have become vital for the country’s economy for two underlying reasons. One is Spain’s fertility rate of 1.1 births per woman, the lowest in the EU after Malta and little more than half the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain demographic stability. “The Spanish, unfortunately, don’t have children. We have pets, but we don’t have children,” Huarte says. The other reason, he says, is that many young Spaniards are disinclined to take arduous jobs: “We’re getting society far too used to government assistance, to grants, to support from the state.”

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Four Ways Europe’s Big Immigration Experiment Has Changed Spain.
  2. Since 2020, it has been responsible for one in four of the 11.1mn new jobs added across the bloc, according.
  3. Roughly 70% of those have gone to immigrants, according to Funcas, a think-tank, which has examined the period since 2019.

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