Viva higher incomes! More immigrants = growth.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Citings - Brief article

AN INFLUX of Hispanic immigrants has fueled economic growth in hundreds of formerly declining rural counties in the United States and boosted per capita incomes. That's the conclusion of a study in the September 2012 issue of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy.

Economists Dennis Coates and T.H. Gindling analyzed the economic fates of nearly 1,500 rural counties that lost population during the 1970s and '80s. In the '90s population loss was reversed in many of those far-flung counties when Hispanic immigrants and their families settled there.

Hispanic immigrants...