The recent immigration report from a Finns Party think tank, which sought to calculate an immigrants prospective effect on the Finnish economy based on their nationality, has come under fire from at least one information design expert.
Juuso Koponen, who specialises in information visualisation, says that leaving out over-70-year-olds from Samuli Salminen’s report distorts its findings unduly as the elderly require the most resources in order to be cared for. Additionally, ethnic Finns over 70 years old outnumber immigrants many times over.
"The report by the Suomen Perusta think tank completely whitewashes ethnic Finns’ effects on the economy," Koponen says.
Divergent findings, researcher unfazed
Salminen says he does not accept the accuracy of Koponen’s critique. Salminen says he has only compared the differences between people of working age.
"It’s only sensible to compare working age people to other working age people, not to involve people outside of that age group," Salminen says. "My most significant findings are from people aged 20—62. Involving any other demoraphics was just a try-out."
The Suomen Perusta report claimed that immigration rakes up costs of some 700 million euros to the country.
Koponen also presents his own findings, based on the Finns Party’s calculations that include the country’s entire adult population.
These results were the completely opposite of Salminen’s research, showing instead that immigrants bring the economy greater gains than so-called ethnic Finns. Koponen found that workers who moved to Finland from abroad accrue costs of around 5,800 euros annually, while ethnic Finns bring losses of more than 7,000 euros.
Samuli Salminen says he is very skeptical of Koponen’s findings, and will not budge from his own research.
"You have to remember, I’ve used a dataset that outside persons do not have access to," Salminen says. "Koponen also made the mistake of including working-age and non-working-age people."