There is a large number of countries around the world where the best description is the saying: "Demography is Destiny!" The four most important ones are China, Russia, Germany and Japan. In Russia, Germany and Japan, the population is decreasing year after year with little prospect that the trend will reverse. The simple fact is that fewer women are having children, and those who do are having a smaller number on average. The result is that the number of old folks has soared as a percentage of the population while the portion of the population who are children has declined dramatically. In each of these three countries there are fewer children between the ages of 1 and 15 than there are people between the ages of 20 and 35. What this means is that in the next two decades, there will be fewer women who could have children than has been the case for the last 20 years. Absent a major increase in the birthrate, the population decline will accelerate. Meanwhile, there will be more and more old folks who will need help from the state to live. That means fewer future taxpayers and more future need for taxation. Eventually, each of these countries will need to import workers just to keep their economies running. While Germany does not have a history of tolerance for so called "guest workers", Japan is much more hostile to "outsiders". These two countries will need to change the attitudes of their people just to keep going. For Russia, the problem is even worse. There are still many Russians who are emigrating although the numbers have abated in the last five years. This makes the drain of workers even worse. Further, Russia has become dependent on oil and gas revenues to keep the economy going. Should these resources start to run out, it will be a calamity for the country.
China is in a different class than the other three. The Chinese population is still growing. For the last thirty-four years, however, China has had the so called "one child" policy. This limits most families to only one child. The result of this policy is that there are now fewer children in each generation than in the one that precedes it. Chinese population no longer rises at a rapid rate, and it is projected to start falling in about another decade. Assuming the policy stays in place, the Chinese population is projected by the UN to fall by 50% by the end of the century. (Such an assumption is, of course, silly.) Much of Chinese industry is fueled by cheap labor from the seemingly unlimited numbers of workers. That will soon change. When it does, it will turn the world economy upside down.
China is in a different class than the other three. The Chinese population is still growing. For the last thirty-four years, however, China has had the so called "one child" policy. This limits most families to only one child. The result of this policy is that there are now fewer children in each generation than in the one that precedes it. Chinese population no longer rises at a rapid rate, and it is projected to start falling in about another decade. Assuming the policy stays in place, the Chinese population is projected by the UN to fall by 50% by the end of the century. (Such an assumption is, of course, silly.) Much of Chinese industry is fueled by cheap labor from the seemingly unlimited numbers of workers. That will soon change. When it does, it will turn the world economy upside down.
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