Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 4 - Notes | Study 100 RCs for GMAT - GMAT

Directions: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions as follows:

For years, U.S. employers have counted on a steady flow of labor from Mexico willing to accept low-skilled, low paying jobs. These workers, many of whom leave economically depressed villages in the Mexican interior, are often more than willing to work for wages well below both the U.S. minimum wage and the poverty line.
However, thanks to a dramatic demographic shift currently taking place in Mexico, the seemingly inexhaustible supply of workers migrating from Mexico to the United States might one day greatly diminish if not cease.
Predictions of such a drastic decrease in the number of Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, are driven by Mexico’s rapidly diminishing population growth. As a result of a decades-long family planning campaign, most Mexicans are having far fewer children than was the norm a generation ago. The campaign, organized around the slogan that “the small family lives better,” saw the Mexican government establish family-planning clinics and offer free contraception. For nearly three decades, the government’s message concerning population hasn’t wavered. In fact, the Mexican Senate recently voted to extend public school sex education programs to kindergarten.
The result of Mexico’s efforts to stem population growth is nothing short of stunning. In 1968, the average Mexican woman had just fewer than seven children; today, the figure is slightly more than two. For two primary reasons, Mexico’s new demographics could greatly impact the number of Mexicans seeking work in the U.S. First, smaller families by their nature limit the pool of potential migrants.
Second, the slowing of Mexico’s population growth has fostered hope that Mexico will develop a healthy middle class of people content to make their livelihoods in their home country.
Though the former of these factors is all but assured, the growth of a healthy middle class is far from a foregone conclusion. The critical challenge for Mexico is what it does with the next 20 years. Mexico must invest in education, job training, and infrastructure, as well as a social-security system to protect its aging population.  If Mexico is willing to step forward and meet this challenge, America may one day wake up to find that, like cheap gasoline, cheap Mexican labor has become a thing of the past.