‘How do you grow an economy without young people?’: What falling birth rates mean | Greg Callaghan
Falling birth rates across nearly all the developed world – and now much of the developing world – have demographers like Paul Morland concerned. While the planet as a whole is projected to be home to 9.8 billion people by 2050 – up from 7.96 billion today – a vast number of countries, from within Europe to South-East Asia to the Americas, are dealing with decades of sub-replacement fertility, which means a total fertility rate below the 2.
Educated, urban and prosperous people tend towards smaller family sizes. As education, urbanisation and prosperity have spread globally, so has sub-replacement fertility rates. Once the preserve of north-west Europe, low fertility spread to the rest of Europe, then to other developed regions like Japan and East Asia. Today, the demography is running ahead of the development, so that even still relatively poor countries like Thailand have low fertility rates.
“We are approaching an era of acute labour shortages in much of the world – and robots are not yet ready to come to our assistance.” It is very much a question of sub-Saharan Africa versus the rest. Outside that region, fertility rates are either low or falling. A few countries like Sri Lanka have managed decades in the two-plus zone, but many others have slipped below it. China has, India is about to. Even countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan have seen sharp falls. Within Africa, there is a complex pattern. South Africa and its neighbours have successfully brought down their fertility rates.
It should. The problem in Russia’s case is there is not a very free flow of information; also, the mechanisms by which a discontented population can change policies are not clear. But this will be a pressure against the indefinite continuation of the war. Russia has been accused of genocide and war crimes, including deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Is this a demographic strategy: trying to weaken and wipe out a culture? Numbers matter here.
First, Russia got to really low fertility rates earlier than the US. Second, it lost much territory – the Russian Empire included today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic states, Central Asia, and so on – and their populations. Third, the US continues to be a magnet for migration. There has been some immigration in Russia from the states of the former Soviet Union but nothing like the scale of migration to the US from all over the world.
You’ve equated government policies designed to increase low birth rates by encouraging women to have more children with trying to push water uphill. Why is that?officially abandoning its one-child policy in January 2016. Countries like Hungary and Russia have poured resources into raising fertility rates but the impact is limited. I believe it’s all about values, and that the ability of governments to impact them is limited.
The decline of marriage and the nuclear family is also playing a role in declining fertility, right? Nearly 30 per cent of Singaporean women between 30 and 39 are single; in Japan, the figure is more than 25 per cent, and in South Korea nearly 34 per cent. What’s happening in these countries?
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‘How do you grow an economy without young people?’: What falling birth rates mean“We are approaching an era of acute labour shortages in much of the world – and robots are not yet ready to come to our assistance,' says demographer Paul Morland. | GregCallaghan1
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