Everyone says they want economic growth. Politicians promise it. Business leaders demand it. But a new report from the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization shows we’re being left behind economically. The reason is simple: Growth requires people.
We can’t have economic growth without either making more people or welcoming more people. Hawai‘i’s elites aren’t doing either.
The UHERO report lays bare what nominal income figures obscure. When adjusted for Hawai‘i’s cost of living, our real per capita income sits alongside Alabama and West Virginia. Our labor productivity ranks among the nation’s worst-performing states. We’re not just expensive, we’re poor.
The economic bind is straightforward: You can’t grow an economy without growing the workforce. That means two options: hHave more children, or attract newcomers.
So why aren’t we doing either?
The Anti-Immigrant Consensus
Listen to the dominant cultural narrative: “Hawai‘i is full.” “Mainlanders are ruining our Islands.” “Stop moving here.” This is the prevailing sentiment found in comment sections on social media.
And it isn’t new. Even 50 years ago, when George Ariyoshi was Governor, concerns about growth were driving political agendas. The difference is that back then, the population was still growing. Now we’re actually shrinking, but the rhetoric has only intensified.
The irony cuts deep. The same people lamenting our economic decline are making newcomers feel unwelcome.
Housing is exhibit A. We say we want affordability, but we fight every new housing development. Why? Because more housing means more people, and we don’t actually want more people.
The truth is blunt: hostility toward newcomers is a feature, not a bug. It keeps the Islands exclusive.
The One-Child Elite
Now shift to the other side of the equation: reproduction. Look at Hawai‘i’s upper-middle-class families. How many children do they plan to have?
Pew Research Center reports that American adults plan to have only 1.7 children, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. For elites, these children will be heavily resourced. Private schools, SAT tutors, Mainland colleges, trust funds. The entire parenting philosophy is intensive investment in a small number of children.
Some are choosing to forego children entirely, giving rise to the DINK (dual-income, no kids) phenomenon.
Contrast this with the Biblical vision of children as blessing, not luxury goods. Contrast it with the demographic reality that below-replacement fertility makes economic decline more likely, as economic growth in Hawai‘i has typically tracked population growth.
My mother was one of five children. Obaachan was one of seven. Grandpa was one of 10. These weren’t wealthy families; they were normal. Large families used to be the default, not the exception.
Today’s low fertility families are self-defeating. These same families will later bemoan the brain drain when their own kids leave for the Mainland. But they’ve made two choices that guarantee that outcome: don’t have enough kids to sustain a workforce, and don’t welcome newcomers to fill the gap.
You can’t complain about labor shortages when you’ve chosen to have one child and oppose the immigration — domestic or international — that would solve the problem.
The Economic Bind
Every culture has to answer a basic question: are children a blessing or a burden? The Biblical answer? “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). That’s not outdated religious poetry; it’s the foundation of human flourishing. Economic growth doesn’t happen in the abstract. It requires human beings. Societies that treat children as blessings get more of them. Societies that treat them as expensive lifestyle choices get fewer.
The progressive solution fails You can’t redistribute your way out of a shrinking workforce. You can’t tax and spend your way to higher productivity. You need people.
The local conservative solution fails too. You can’t complain about economic stagnation while opposing people moving to the Islands and opposing the development necessary to house newcomers.
Both sides want the fruit of growth without the root of growth: more humans.
The Challenge
The data shows Hawai‘i is following the economic trajectory of West Virginia, not California. We’re being left behind. The question is whether we actually want growth, or whether we want a gated community for people who already live here.
If we want growth, we need to do one or both of these things:
First, have more children. Not one or two. Three, four, five, or more! Make large families normal again, not a marker of religious devotion or lower-class irresponsibility.
Second, welcome immigrants. Stop the “Hawai‘i is full” rhetoric. Build more housing.
Right now, Hawai‘i’s elites are choosing decline. They’re just pretending otherwise.
It’s easy to blame them. Harder to admit we’ve absorbed the same assumptions, that kids are expensive, that newcomers are problems, that growth is bad. Maybe it’s time to question what we’ve been taught.
