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Globalization
October 10, 2024 ’The age of depopulation’. UN Population Division (UNPD) has reported that by 2022, every population in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan was shrinking. By 2023, fertility levels were 40 percent below replacement in Japan, over 50 percent below replacement in China, almost 60 percent below replacement in Taiwan, and 65 percent below replacement in South Korea. The Southeast Asian region as a whole fell below the replacement level around 2018. South Asia dropped below replacement before the pandemic. The UNPD has calculated overall fertility for the region of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2024 at 1.8 births per woman - 14 percent below the replacement rate. In North Africa and the greater Middle East demographers have long assumed that the Islamic faith served as a bulwark against precipitous fertility declines. Despite of this, Iran has been a sub-replacement society for about a quarter century. Tunisia, Turkey has also dipped below replacement. For half a century, Europe’s overall fertility rates have been continuously sub-replacement. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has witnessed 17 million more deaths than births. The 27 countries of the current European Union are about 30 percent below replacement today. Together, they reported just under 3.7 million births in 2023 - down from 6.8 million in 1964. The EU has been a net-mortality zone since 2012, and in 2022 it registered four deaths for every three births. The UNPD has estimated that in 2020, the continent entered what will become a long-term population decline. The sub-Saharan Africa, with its roughly 1.2 billion people and a UNPD-projected average fertility rate of 4.3 births per woman today, is the planet’s last consequential redoubt of the fertility patterns that characterized low-income countries during the population explosion of the middle half of the twentieth century. The UNPD has estimated that fertility levels in sub-Saharan Africa have fallen by over 35 percent since the late 1970s, when the subcontinent’s overall level was an astonishing 6.8 births per woman The United States remains the main outlier among developed countries, with relatively high fertility levels for a rich country (although far below replacement - just over 1.6 births per woman in 2023) and steady inflows of immigrants. In 1994, the economist Pritchett discovered that the most powerful national fertility predictor ever detected is what women want. While the overall population growth slumps, the number of seniors (defined here as people aged 65 or older) will surge exponentially - everywhere. South Korea provides the most stunning vision of a depopulating society just a generation away. Current projections have suggested that South Korea will mark three deaths for every birth by 2050. In some UNPD projections, the median age in South Korea will approach 60. More than 40 percent of the country’s population will be senior citizens; more than one in six South Koreans will be over the age of 80. South Korea will have just a fifth as many babies in 2050 as it did in 1961. It will have barely 1.2 working-age people for every senior citizen. The lack of desire for children is why the extinction of every family line could be only one generation away. Tomorrow’s world will be much more African. Although about a seventh of the world’s population today lives in sub-Saharan Africa, the region accounts for nearly a third of all births; its share of the world’s workforce and population are thus set to grow immensely over the coming generation. Human capital - not just population totals - matters greatly to national power, and the outlook for human capital in sub-Saharan Africa remains disappointing. Standardized tests indicate that a stunning 94 percent of youth in the region lack even basic skills. As huge as the region’s 2050 pool of workers promises to be, the number of workers with basic skills may not be much larger there than it will be in Russia alone in 2050. India is now the world’s most populous country and on track to continue to grow for at least another few decades. Its demographics virtually assure that the country will be a leading power in 2050. But India’s rise is compromised by human resource vulnerabilities. India has a world-class cadre of scientists, technicians, and elite graduates. But ordinary Indians receive poor education. A shocking seven out of eight young people in India today lack even basic skills - a consequence of both low enrollment and the generally poor quality of the primary and secondary schools available to those lucky enough to get schooling. The skills profile for China’s youth is decades, maybe generations, ahead of India’s youth today. India is unlikely to surpass a depopulating China in per capita output or even in total GDP for a very long time. Russia’s shrinking numbers and its seemingly intractable difficulties with public health and knowledge production have been reducing the country’s relative economic power for decades, with no turnaround in sight. China’s birth crash - the next generation is on track to be only half as large as the preceding one - will unavoidably slash the workforce and turbocharge population aging, even as the Chinese extended family, heretofore the country’s main social safety net, atrophies and disintegrates. These impending realities presage unimagined new social welfare burdens for a no longer dazzling Chinese economy and may end up hamstringing the funding for Beijing’s international ambitions. As for the United States, the demographic fundamentals look fairly sound - at least when compared with the competition. Demographic trends are on course to augment American power over the coming decades, lending support for continued U.S. global preeminence. Given the domestic tensions and social strains that Americans are living through today, these long-term American advantages may come as a surprise. But they are already beginning to be taken into account by observers and actors abroad. Thanks in large measure to immigration, the United States is on track to account for a growing share of the rich world’s labor force, youth, and highly educated talent. Continuing inflows of skilled immigrants also give the country a great advantage. 'No other population on the planet is better placed to translate population potential into national power' - and it looks as if that demographic edge will be at least as great in 2050. Compared with other contenders, 'U.S. demographics look great today - and may look even better tomorrow - pending, it must be underscored, continued public support for immigration'. The United States remains the most important geopolitical exception to the coming depopulation. (Source: foreignaffairs)
by Eberstadt, a Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.
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