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Demography and the social contract

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Demography

I gratefully acknowledge the able research assistance and technical support of Michael F. Maltese, the programming assistance of Chang Chung, and the bibliographic support of Elana Broch and Jackie Druery. I am also indebted to several colleagues who offered helpful comments on drafts of this article: Sigal Alon, Noreen Goldman, Germán Rodríguez, James Trussell, and Charles Westoff. Institutional support was provided by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P30HD32030) to Princeton University’s Office of Population Research and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.

Abstract

As the most demographically complex nation in the world, the United States faces ever more formidable challenges to fulfill its commitment to the democratic values of equity and inclusion as the foreign-born share of the population increases. Immigration, the major source of the contemporary diversification of the population, provides several lessons about how to prepare for that future within a framework of social justice and how to realign recent demographic trends with cherished democratic principles. A review of historical and contemporary controversies about the representation of the foreign-born and alien suffrage both illustrates the reemergence of ascriptive civic hierarchies and highlights some potentially deleterious social and civic consequences of recent demographic trends.

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  1. Office of Population Research, Princeton University, 247 Wallace Hall, 08544-2091, NJ, Princeton

    Marta Tienda

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Tienda, M. Demography and the social contract. Demography 39, 587–616 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2002.0041

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