ARTICLE: “Cradle snatching: The difficulties of living with a low birth-rate,” The Economist, 18 March 2006, p. 55.

SURVEY (City of Chicago): “The Mexican motor: Latinos are now the region’s biggest minority,” The Economist, 18 March 2006, p. 16.

Two countries going in different directions. In Germany, there is talk of “demographic theft” in which parts of the country that are short of young people are luring them away from other sections, in a Pied Piper like manner. So Germany witnesses a profound shift of bodies from East to West, turning the former DDR into something akin to the Plains small towns that are drying up.

It is an amazingly vicious cycle: “after losing the young, female and well-educated, municipalities have to close schools, increase utility fees to finance an oversize infrastructure and spend more on an aging population--all of which makes them still less attractive.”

Meanwhile, listen to Chicago’s demographic re-blooming: between 1970 and 2004, Latinos account for 96% of population growth in the six counties that define the greater Chicago region. That’s right--96%.

What’s weird with this is that the Hispanics skip the ghetto and go straight to the suburbs, where they do the 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) jobs. So they’re dispersed even as they cluster in small networks.

In this somewhat hard landing in America, Hispanics make do with a lot less services, or better to say, they tend to be underserved.

What changes that? Hispanics get money, they elect leaders, those leaders push for changes.

That’s how it’s worked for minorities throughout our country’s long history. You want to tell who’s coming up next? Check out the boxers and cops. At one time, those were more Irish pursuits. At another, more Italian. At another, more black. Now, more and more Hispanic.

Two countries headed in different directions.

I’m not worried. I love Mexican.