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rfmcdonaldJust today, I noticed an interesting article in the Korea Times, "Alarming Birth Rate Decline: Job Security, Social Justice Ought to Be Enhanced":
The article continues:
South Korea, though, is a relatively rich country, as prosperous as Portugal or Slovenia, and two-thirds as rich as Canada or Japan. Adapting to rapid population aging will take significant effort, in revamping retirement systems and the expectations of people as to their activities as seniors. Given a continuing positive economic outlook--including, significantly, a labour shortage in unskilled trades along with significant immigrant pressures from ethnic Koreans and other potential migrants--it should be possible for South Korea to cope. Similarly, Hong Kong, which has seen a collapse in fertility rates to less than one child born per woman, can draw upon a vast immigrant-sending hinterland (if it wants to, of course, which isn't obvious).
I think that countries and regions with economies which are basically modern though just short of being First World can adapt to population aging and shrinkage. Work needs to be done, combining economic and social restructuring with varying degrees of replacement migration, with immigrants being drawn from poorer countries which are either geographically nearby or culturally similar to the sending country. I believe that central Europe, for instance, has that potential.
The problem with this global demographic picture, though, is the question of what happens to the sending regions, which have gone through the demographic transition and acheived below-replacement fertility rates, but which continue to see substantial net emigration. Last April, I identified the Middle East as a whole as a region that could face this prospect. In Europe, regions and countries like the Caucasus, Ukraine, and southeastern Europe--all areas with severely underperforming economies, dysfunctional socioeconomic systems, and traditions of mass emigration--could readily share this fate. Even in rich countries like Canada, relatively poorer regions like Atlantic Canada are even now experiencing significant emigration towards Canada's major metropolitan areas, of which the four largest--greater Montréal, the Golden Horseshoe around Toronto, the Calgary-Edmonton corridor in Alberta, and the Lower Mainland in British Columbia--have a 51% majority of Canada's population and further receive the lion's share of foreign immigration.
The latest demographic projections suggest that the world population will peak at 8.9 billion, before beginning a slow decline. Increasingly, though, I suspect that the magnitude of the decline has been significantly understated--no one expected Spanish and Italian fertility rates to drop as much as they did. For instance, the report "The Graying of the Middle Kingdom" (available here, PDF format) which predicts significant problems for China, is the first study I've seen which considers the possibility that fertility rates might crash nation-wide to the levels found in Hong Kong or elsewhere in urban China. This is a quite possible scenario, considering the social modernization of rural China, the country's extensive rural-to-urban migration, and the development of the rural economy to the point that it makes more money from remittances than agricultural labour. All of these factors tend to bring rural Chinese into much closer contact with urban Chinese, and as China goes, I suspect most of the underdeveloped world will follow.
Rural areas worldwide, in rich countries and poor countries, will be hit worst by this, particularly rural areas with unmodernized labour-intensive agricultural economies which suddenly find themselves lacking the labour they need. (Ukraine, anyone?) Globally, we may see a growing concentration of population in the relatively richer parts of the world--in the First World generally, but also in Mexico and MERCOSUR in Latin America, in the coastal provinces of China, in the south of the Korean peninsula, and elsewhere.
There's an irony here. At the 1974 Bucharest conference on world population, non-Western governments opposed Western governments which proposed relatively intrusive forms of population control. Many governments, most prominently China, claimed that these proposals were motivated by Western fears that growing non-Western populations would shift the global balance of power: If the world outside the West couldn't be rich, it could at least be populous. Now, it seems there's a realistic chance that much of it might be neither.
UPDATE (10:24 PM) : Crossposted to Bonoboland.
These days, an increasing number of young couples are not interested in having babies. Consequently, the rapidly declining birth rate has emerged as a serious social issue. In a desperate effort to increase the fertility rate, the government recently decided to grant a three-month leave to working husbands when their spouses give birth.
The alarming birth rate decline is supported by data, which the National Statistical Office made public Thursday. The number of births given by the nation's women averaged 1.17 in 2002, lower than 1.6 for the United Kingdom, 1.9 for France and 2.1 for the United States. The figures showed a steep decline from the 4.53 registered in 1970.
The article continues:
Reflecting the rapid birth rate decline, children and secondary-school students accounted for 27.5 percent of the nation's total population in 2000, compared with 51.1 percent in 1965, 43.4 percent in 1980 and 33.86 percent in 1990. The number of children aged between six and 11 is estimated at 4.13 million, a 24.8 percent fall from 5.5 million in 1980.
The declining birth rate is certain to trigger a wide range of social problems unless it is addressed as early as possible. First of all, it will be impossible for the nation to become an economic power. The current job insecurity will further deteriorate because a large number of schools will inevitably close. Women might be conscripted to make up for shortages of military manpower. Various pension funds will be depleted, threatening the welfare system in its infant stage. The nation will suddenly become an aged society. Retired people will be compelled to return to worksites.
Young people's indifference to marriage or having children when married reflects not only their despair of worsening living conditions but also their disillusionment with social discrepancies. The unstable job market is afflicting young people the most, as demonstrated by their unemployment rate running nearly three times as high as the nation's average. The job outlook is getting bleaker as corporations are in a hurry to move their operations to China and other developing countries because of high labor costs and militant unions at home. Exorbitant housing prices, wealthy people's tax evasion and their children's luxurious living styles without working, and corruption spread wide in all walks of life are driving young people to lose their vision about the future.
As long as these economic woes and social injustices remain not addressed, there is no way to curb the falling birth rate.
South Korea, though, is a relatively rich country, as prosperous as Portugal or Slovenia, and two-thirds as rich as Canada or Japan. Adapting to rapid population aging will take significant effort, in revamping retirement systems and the expectations of people as to their activities as seniors. Given a continuing positive economic outlook--including, significantly, a labour shortage in unskilled trades along with significant immigrant pressures from ethnic Koreans and other potential migrants--it should be possible for South Korea to cope. Similarly, Hong Kong, which has seen a collapse in fertility rates to less than one child born per woman, can draw upon a vast immigrant-sending hinterland (if it wants to, of course, which isn't obvious).
I think that countries and regions with economies which are basically modern though just short of being First World can adapt to population aging and shrinkage. Work needs to be done, combining economic and social restructuring with varying degrees of replacement migration, with immigrants being drawn from poorer countries which are either geographically nearby or culturally similar to the sending country. I believe that central Europe, for instance, has that potential.
The problem with this global demographic picture, though, is the question of what happens to the sending regions, which have gone through the demographic transition and acheived below-replacement fertility rates, but which continue to see substantial net emigration. Last April, I identified the Middle East as a whole as a region that could face this prospect. In Europe, regions and countries like the Caucasus, Ukraine, and southeastern Europe--all areas with severely underperforming economies, dysfunctional socioeconomic systems, and traditions of mass emigration--could readily share this fate. Even in rich countries like Canada, relatively poorer regions like Atlantic Canada are even now experiencing significant emigration towards Canada's major metropolitan areas, of which the four largest--greater Montréal, the Golden Horseshoe around Toronto, the Calgary-Edmonton corridor in Alberta, and the Lower Mainland in British Columbia--have a 51% majority of Canada's population and further receive the lion's share of foreign immigration.
The latest demographic projections suggest that the world population will peak at 8.9 billion, before beginning a slow decline. Increasingly, though, I suspect that the magnitude of the decline has been significantly understated--no one expected Spanish and Italian fertility rates to drop as much as they did. For instance, the report "The Graying of the Middle Kingdom" (available here, PDF format) which predicts significant problems for China, is the first study I've seen which considers the possibility that fertility rates might crash nation-wide to the levels found in Hong Kong or elsewhere in urban China. This is a quite possible scenario, considering the social modernization of rural China, the country's extensive rural-to-urban migration, and the development of the rural economy to the point that it makes more money from remittances than agricultural labour. All of these factors tend to bring rural Chinese into much closer contact with urban Chinese, and as China goes, I suspect most of the underdeveloped world will follow.
Rural areas worldwide, in rich countries and poor countries, will be hit worst by this, particularly rural areas with unmodernized labour-intensive agricultural economies which suddenly find themselves lacking the labour they need. (Ukraine, anyone?) Globally, we may see a growing concentration of population in the relatively richer parts of the world--in the First World generally, but also in Mexico and MERCOSUR in Latin America, in the coastal provinces of China, in the south of the Korean peninsula, and elsewhere.
There's an irony here. At the 1974 Bucharest conference on world population, non-Western governments opposed Western governments which proposed relatively intrusive forms of population control. Many governments, most prominently China, claimed that these proposals were motivated by Western fears that growing non-Western populations would shift the global balance of power: If the world outside the West couldn't be rich, it could at least be populous. Now, it seems there's a realistic chance that much of it might be neither.
UPDATE (10:24 PM) : Crossposted to Bonoboland.
