[BRIEF NOTE] Iran's Aging Population
Sep. 16th, 2005 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldSpengler, over at Asia Times, examines the impact of aging populations on the Middle East in general, Iran in particular.
This is unsurprising. As I noted back in April 2003, the same factors that pushed fertility rates down in the West and that is pushing fertility rates down in most of Asia and Latin America--education, secularization, public social-welfare systems, the cost of raising children in urban non-agricultural settings--are pushing fertility rates down in the Middle East. If anything, the long-term demographic prospects of the Middle East may be worse than Europe, since that continent can at least count on receiving immigrants.
Frequently, Spengler is wrong in many interesting ways. Do I think that he's wrong about his central argument, that there's only a brief span of time--perhaps only a single generation--for Middle Eastern polities to ascend to the top of the great-power hierarchy? I will say that the ongoing demographic transition does create an opening for rapid economic growth, as Edward Hugh has noted elsewhere, with a low dependency ratio and a high proportion of workers providing the raw human capital for an economic boom. If this opportunity is missed ...
By 2050, elderly dependents will comprise nearly a third of the population of some Muslim nations, notably Iran - converging on America's dependency ratio at mid-century. But it is one thing to face such a problem with America's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $40,000, and quite another to face it with Iran's per capita GDP of $7,000 - especially given that Iran will stop exporting oil before the population crisis hits.
The industrial nations face the prospective failure of their pension systems. But what will happen to countries that have no pension system, where traditional society assumes the care of the aged and infirm? In these cases it is traditional society that will break down, horribly and irretrievably so.
This is unsurprising. As I noted back in April 2003, the same factors that pushed fertility rates down in the West and that is pushing fertility rates down in most of Asia and Latin America--education, secularization, public social-welfare systems, the cost of raising children in urban non-agricultural settings--are pushing fertility rates down in the Middle East. If anything, the long-term demographic prospects of the Middle East may be worse than Europe, since that continent can at least count on receiving immigrants.
Frequently, Spengler is wrong in many interesting ways. Do I think that he's wrong about his central argument, that there's only a brief span of time--perhaps only a single generation--for Middle Eastern polities to ascend to the top of the great-power hierarchy? I will say that the ongoing demographic transition does create an opening for rapid economic growth, as Edward Hugh has noted elsewhere, with a low dependency ratio and a high proportion of workers providing the raw human capital for an economic boom. If this opportunity is missed ...
